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COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 




THE BOY EXPLORERS IN 
DARKEST NEW GUINEA 









[See page 206 

ALL THE GENEROUS INSTINCTS OF YOUTH ROSE UP IN HIM AT THE 
SIGHT, AND WITHOUT THINKING FURTHER HE RAISED HIS PISTOL 
AND FIRED AT THE NEAREST PYGMY 



THE BOY EXPLORERS SERIES 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 

IN 

DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


BY 

WARREN H. MILLER 


With Illustrations hy 
FRANK SPRADLING 



HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 






OCT 18 1821 


The Boy Explorers in Darkest New Guinea 

Copyright, 1921, by Harper & Brothers 
Printed in the United States of America 
i-v 


§>CIA627286 



'Vh ~y 


A 


CONTENTS 

CHAP. PAGE 

I. Aru i 

II. Into the Jungle 22 

III. Pirate Visitations 42 

IV. Nicky Encounters a Death Adder 65 

V. The Outanatas 83 

VI. The Curator’s Air Pistol 98 

VII. Cassowary Camp 116 

VIII. Pygmy Land 136 

IX. The Fight at the Crater 160 

X. Cinnabar Mountain 1 77 

XI. The Flight to the Coast 198 

XII. The Escape to Aru 219 












































. 



















, 









































K* 












ILLUSTRATIONS 


All the Generous Instincts of Youth Rose Up 
in Him at the Sight, and Without Thinking 
Further He Raised His Pistol and Fired 

at the Nearest Pygmy Frontispiece 

The Way Led Back Through the Same Trail 
the Natives Had Come Up On, the Jungle 
Path Working Gradually Downward to 

THE LAGOON Facing p. 96 

Then a Shiver Went Through the Bird, Its 
Eyes Fluttered Closed, and the Grip of 
Its Bill Loosened, While the Boy Tugged 

Himself Free “ 132 

The Pistols Barked in Unison with the High- 
pitched Yell That the Man Let Out . . 


226 






















I 







































' 
































































































































. 




■ 

































THE BOY EXPLORERS IN 
DARKEST NEW GUINEA 



THE BOY EXPLORERS IN 
DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


i 

ARU 

“TAND HO! fellows — yonder to the east. 

JL 4 Can you make it out? ” 

The two youths beside the tall man who 
had spoken shaded their eyes from the tropical 
glare and searched the cloud banks on the 
horizon of the blue Banda Sea. 

“I think I see it, sir,” said Dwight. “Part 
of those clouds seem to have faint white lines 
in them.” 

“I see it!” exclaimed Nicky, peering 
through his glasses. “It’s developing out 
like a camera plate — high, jungly mountains 
that seem to be floating in the clouds. I see 
dark spaces now, with streaks of sunlight edging 
the outlines of the hills. Hurrah for Aru!” 

“That’s not Aru; that’s Ke’,” returned the 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


man. “Aru is too low and flat to be seen yet. 
It lies to the east of Ke\ Our bungalow is on 
Kobror, the southernmost of the Aru Islands; 
we ought to pass the port of Dobbo in a few 
hours.” 

The three white men were standing before 
a small palm-thatched deckhouse which was 
their home on the Malay proa Kuching . 
Curator Baldwin of the National Museum 
was their leader. He was a tall, rangy giant 
of a man, his sinewy frame clad in tropical 
khaki, with the inevitable puttees of the 
East accentuating the muscular leanness of 
his long legs. One placed him easily — mining 
engineer or leader of a scientific field party, 
captain of his team in college days, most 
likely, that commanding sort of man to whom 
exploration in dangerous out-of-the-way places 
is all in the day’s work. 

And the choleric blue eyes that looked a 
man in the eye from under his pith helmet, 
the surbumt face with its gray mustache 
and firm chin, warned the casual stranger that 
here was the last man in the world to trifle 
with. 

The two youths beside him were scarcely 
less noteworthy. Their resolute, weather- 
tanned young faces bespoke the hardy out- 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

doorsmen, of the same breed, but younger, as 
the curator. Dwight was tall and spare, 
with a keen hatchet face and merry gray- 
green eyes that twinkled at one when he 
talked, yet they could grow hard and cold as 
ice in time of peril. Nicky was stout; habit- 
ually good-humored, habitually chuckling over 
the least joke, and always finding one and 
making himself the butt of it on every occa- 
sion. They were a great team ; always ‘ ‘ josh- 
ing” each other, always differing on every 
conceivable subject, yet devoted to each 
other and to the curator, whom they adored 
as an athlete and admired as a scientist. 
For two years they had been his assistants on 
expeditions in Africa and in British Guiana. 
He had picked them for this trip because of 
their tried and proven resourcefulness in fac- 
ing conditions as they found them in wild 
lands. As unlike, physically, as two boys 
could be, they were alike in one thing — their 
sturdy independence of character. Original 
in everything they did, they copied no one, 
neither in their outdoor equipment nor in their 
ways of living when in the jungle. 

The Malay proa on which the party was 
sailing bore the house flag of the museum 
floating from the end of her seventy-foot fore- 
2 3 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


yard. In these days of interisland steamers 
you will not see so many of her type, once 
the most common craft of the Banda Sea. 
Her sails were huge mats of palm fiber; her 
masts tripods of bamboo; and her body, 
built on Ke’ by the greatest boat builders 
of the Malay Archipelago, was of hewn logs, 
doweled together along their edges and se- 
cured by ribs of teak bent in and lashed with 
rattan to projections on her planks. There 
was not an iron nail or a spike in her any- 
where, but the curator had chartered her for 
the museum’s field expeditions among the 
islands as the best ship for the purpose, for 
her crew of Javanese and Bugis cost but their 
rations of rice and fish, with a small wage, 
and she could sail anywhere and be repaired 
at any island with native palm and rattan. 

Over the smooth rollers of the Banda Sea 
she bowled southward on the east monsoon, 
steadily rising the low hills of Aru to the east. 
By midaftemoon she had come off Dobbo, the 
principal pearl port of the Aru Islands, and 
the captain altered her course slightly, heading 
for the coast of Kobror, the wildest of the 
two great mainlands of Aru. 

Out of the coral reefs that surround the 
harbor of Dobbo put forth a long, black canoe. 

4 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


Her crew of naked blacks foamed up the water 
in spats of spray with their paddles, singing 
and shouting as they came. Up in her high 
carved prow sat a white man, dressed in the 
cottons of the equatorial tropics, with a 
Japanese-bowl hat sheltering his head from 
the sun. He rose and waved them a greeting 
as his canoe drew near. 

“Proa ahoy! I say, are you there, Bald- 
win?” he shouted. “I’m going on to Kobror 
with you.” 

“Hello, Bentham! That’s fine, old man! 
Come right aboard and we’ll have tiffin. . . . 
Did you get my letter? These mail steamers 
only touch Aru about once in a dog’s age, they 
tell me. How are you, old new-chum?” greeted 
the curator, grasping Bentham’s hand as the 
canoe shot alongside and her crew of mop- 
haired Papuans leaped aboard to mingle with 
their own crew. 

“How am I, dea-rr man? My word! Rip- 
pin’! Yes, I got your letter, doncherknow. 
Have a bungalow for you; I fancy it’s more or 
less done in, but it’s out in the jungle, as you 
wanted,” he replied, shaking hands heartily. 

“It was mighty good of you, Bentham!” 
thanked the curator. “We’ll fix it up and 
make it our headquarters while down here. 

5 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


We’re stopping on Kobror a day or so after 
paradise birds.” 

He turned to introduce Dwight and Nicky, 
who had been studying Bentham curiously. 
The bold, independent swagger of the Aus- 
tralian was written in every line of his sun- 
burnt face. He was the representative of the 
Aru pearl company, the curator had told 
them, sole white man in a whole group of 
islands peopled by native black savages. 

They led the pearl trader to their house 
on deck, where the Javanese cook served 
tiffin. It was a cozy little retreat, about 
ten feet square by perhaps six high, and was 
built of bamboo arches thatched with palm- 
leaf attap. Its floor was raised some six 
inches above the wet deck by springy bamboo 
poles laid side by side, and the thatch walls 
were lined with fragrant sandalwood boxes, 
which also served for bunks. 

Bentham was pathetically glad to see them, 
eager to talk and talk of the war and the 
world’s doings, with all the pensive loneliness 
of a white man condemned to months and 
months of existence with no other associates 
than Papuan natives and Chinese traders. 
The curator and the boys filled him up with 
news to his heart’s content. Just to hear 
6 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

their voices in the good old mother tongue 
once more, to feel their keen minds sym- 
pathetic with his own, was pleasure enough, 
and Bentham basked luxuriantly in it. 

“Where to next, after Kobror, Baldwin?” 
he asked, after a pause in the flow of news, 

“Dutch New Guinea,” puffed the curator. 
“That’s our main drive this time. Our 
proa sails for there in a day or so.” 

“Dutch New Guinea!” The trader’s face 
grew suddenly grave. “My word, man! 
Have you read Captain Rawling’s report of 
the British expedition up the Mimika? Or 
about the Dutchman, Lorentz’s, dash to 
peak Wilhelmina in the Snow Mountains? 
He’s the only one who has got to them, so 
far.” 

“Sure! We’re familiar with all that. But 
I can say this to you, Bentham, you being 
an Australian: the trouble with the British, 
and with the Dutch, too, is that they can’t 
get away from the safari idea. Get me? 
Every one of their expeditions failed because 
of it. Your Englishman must have his tub 
and his champagne, his big tents and heavy 
camp furniture, his tinned sweetmeats and 
what not, and it takes an army of porters to 
carry it all. He learned the safari idea in 
7 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


Africa; but it won’t work in New Guinea, 
because you can neither move a safari through 
the jungle nor live off the country with it. 
The British were a year and a half on the 
Mimika, and they never got within forty 
miles of the Snow Mountains. It took them 
five weeks to cut a safari trail three miles 
long. All that country, from the Great 
Precipice to the sea, is a flat, dense jungle, 
with the rivers running through it so swiftly 
that they are impossible to ascend. They 
contented themselves with plane-table sur- 
veys made from a clearing in the jungle, and 
before long their army of porters died like 
flies of beriberi. 

“We are going to try the American idea,” 
he continued, “going light” — ‘pigging it,’ 
the British call it — but it gets you some- 
where. We’ll take our own light, concen- 
trated foods along, and live off the country 
on wallabys and wild pig for fresh meat. 
There’ll be plenty for us.” 

“But, man dea-rr — the danger!” objected 
Bentham. “These Aru niggers, here, had 
the fear of God dynamited into them some 
forty years ago, and they’ll jolly well never 
touch a white man again! But it’s differ- 
ent in Dutch New Guinea. They’re can- 
8 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

nibals and head hunters, and most of them 
have never even seen a white man. The 
English territory is somewhat policed, but, 
my word! the Dutch have only two small 
posts six hundred miles apart on the whole 
west coast! You’ve heard of the Tugeri 
head hunters? Many a time our soldiers 
have chased them over the border — where 
they stay, to raid us again whenever they 
feel like it — as jolly a bunch of cannibals 
as ever cut a throat. And the pygmies of 
the mountains! My word! Your little party 
would be massacred the first step ashore. 
What could you do against fifty of them, or 
a hundred?” 

“Oh — well manage!” twinkled the curator, 
mysteriously. 

“Man dea-rr, it's foolhardiness! Here, let 
me give you some dynamite sticks, anyway. 
It’s plain suicide to go ashore without it. 
Our expedition, with its army of porters, 
was all right — but you!” 

“Say, Bentham, there's been a war, you 
know!” laughed the curator, “and I was in 
it — lieutenant of a trench-bombing detail. 
Dynamite is old stuff, now. I've brought 
a few grenades along, if we have any trouble.” 

“You’ll need ’em for those blighters!” 

9 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


exclaimed Bentham. “So you were in 
France, eh?” The regret in his own tones 
told how keenly it galled him to have been 
stuck down here out of it all. The talk 
went back to the war again, of which he 
could never get enough. 

“Yes, we're going to try a new tack in a 
new way,” said the curator, when they got 
back to the expedition again. “We're going 
to land in that long lagoon at the head of 
Dorgo Bay. No white men have ever been 
in that way. The mountains come right 
close to shore there, and we can get on high 
ground right off and avoid that swampy 
jungle. Then, southward along the ridges 
above the Great Precipice for ours, and we’ll 
see what we’ll see.” 

“Well!” said Bentham, shaking his head, 
“good luck to you! But the pygmies or the 
Outanatas will get you sure! You'll have to 
wade through dynamite the whole way!” 

“Oh, we're not exactly unprepared, you 
know, ’ ' demurred the curator. He showed him 
a curious pistol that the boys had often 
speculated over. It looked like a foreign 
automatic, only its barrel was a mere shell 
of steel, like a shotgun, and it had no ham- 
mer or firing mechanism. 


IO 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


“I had this made. Sort of shell thrower, 
you know. It’s rather effective at moderate 
ranges — shoots T. N. T. shells. It pays to 
look ahead in these expeditions and try to 
meet conditions as you imagine them likely 
to turn out. Force, and plenty of it, is the 
only thing the savage really understands, 
so we’re fixed to defend ourselves if we have 
to.” 

Bentham looked relieved. “But suppose 
you get captured and tied up?” he ques- 
tioned. “Those beggars will eat you, sure 
— like you all the better if you are white.” 

“I’ve been tied up before. Mundurucus, 
up the Orinoco. But I didn’t stay tied long.” 

He twirled a ring on his right hand with 
his thumb as the others looked at him ques- 
tioningly. 

“Picked this up from an old guru up in 
the Himalayas. Came out of some Indian 
palace, most likely. I bet it’s got a history!” 
He pressed the monogram of the ring with 
his thumb tip as they watched. It was all 
done with one hand, but out of its base a 
tiny, two-edged steel knife stuck up from 
the base of the monogram. “You twist your 
wrist, with that ring knife inside, you see, 
and you’d be surprised to see how easy it is 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


to cut a thong around your wrists with it,” 
he exclaimed. 

Shouts on deck interrupted the boys' 
exclamations of astonishment and brought 
them running out of the cabin. The main- 
land of Kobror lay off not a mile to wind- 
ward. The crew were tacking ship, and all 
was shouting and confusion. 

“I guess we’d better get our outfits ready, 
boys,” said the curator. “Call Sadok and 
Baderoon, so we can muster the party and 
see that they have everything.” 

Presently Dwight returned, followed by 
Sadok and Baderoon. The former was a 
hill Dyak, the “star” bird hunter of their 
party. He came up, completely armed, with 
his long sumpitan, or blowgun, of Borneo in 
hand, and on his left arm was a conical shield 
of bamboo. A steel parang-ihlang hung at 
his belt, and over his shoulder was suspended 
the bamboo quiver of darts for the blowgun. 
His muscular brown arms and shoulders 
glistened in the sunlight which glinted on the 
gold and silver threads of his gorgeous chawat 
and the dull jewels that studded his jacket. 

“What have you got for a sleeping rig in 
the jungle, Sadok?” inquired the curator 
as the Dyak stood waiting inspection. 

12 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

Sadok turned him around, exposing the 
tightly rolled cadjan, or native mat, hung 
on his back. Unrolled, it would be about 
four feet square, and it was house, blanket, 
mattress, and umbrella in one to him, for 
one comer of it was sewed into a pocket, so 
that he could wear the thing over his head 
when it rained. 

“ You’ll do, Sadok. Mr. Bentham, here, 
will assign you some black boys to carry up 
our stuff when we land. You’ll take charge 
of them.” 

“ A’right, Orang-kaya!” grinned Sadok, and 
went forward among the crew again. 

“Baderoon next!” called the curator. 
“What you-fellah got to take ’long beach?” 

Baderoon burst into boisterous Papuan 
merriment and did a handspring on deck. 
All he owned in the world was the long bow 
in his hand and a string about his middle, 
with a quiver of arrows dangling from it. 
His dress hardly needed taking off at night. 
There was a brass ring around one arm, with 
some tufts of human hair ornamenting it, 
whose owner had been eaten long ago — 
details obscure if you asked Baderoon! — 
and there was a three-pronged comb stuck 
into the long frizzles of his mop of hair. 
13 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


Then, he wore a small tin mirror hanging 
by a string from his nose, and when Bade- 
roon had put on that prized possession he 
had said the last word in dandyism! 

“Here, Baderoon-fellah, catch’m blanket!’' 
said the curator, tossing him a spare one. 
“And mind you don’t wear it about your 
neck, the way the Wanderobos did when the 
English forbade them to come into town 
without a blanket to cover their nakedness!” 

Baderoon exploded in a gust of merriment 
and tied the blanket decorously about his 
waist. At a sign of dismissal he went for- 
ward to rejoin Sadok. The proa was now 
tacking in through the coral reefs. A fleet 
of black canoes came out from the village on 
shore to meet her. The paddlers scrambled 
aboard and immediately surrounded the white 
men, pointing and gesticulating with unslaked 
Papuan curiosity. Their long noses hooked 
at them like parrots’ beaks as they cackled 
boisterously, fingering freely and unabashed 
the clothing and equipment of the whites. 

In a final reach the proa ran hard aground 
on the white sand beach, and everyone pre- 
pared to jump ashore over her bow. 

“So long, for the present, Baldwin,” said 
Bentham, shaking hands. “I’ve got some 
14 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


pearl business to attend to here with the 
chief, and I sha’n’t see you again. These 
rotters will carry up your luggage as your 
man directs. Send for me if you need any- 
thing.' ' 

He nodded cordially and was off into the 
village of Wamba, which straggled along the 
shore under lines of coco palms. They 
landed and went up its one street, followed 
by a long line of black porters, each with a 
single article balanced on his head. The 
veranda of their bungalow peeped out of the 
jungle on a low hillside at the end of the 
street. Bamboos hovered over it thickly, 
their nodding willow-leaved foliage almost 
hiding its thatched roof from view. Here 
all their outfit was set down and the curator 
began settling like an old campaigner. 

The boys sat out on the veranda, looking 
down on the main street of Wamba with the 
keenest interest. The tall peaked gables of 
the thatch houses lined both sides of the 
sandy road. Each house was made of long 
bamboo poles, laid up A-shaped like a wedge 
tent and lashed with rattan at their tops. 
Every foot of the street seemed covered with 
busy people, for everybody’s business was 
being transacted out in the main road, in 
is 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


everyone’s way. There were mop-headed 
Papuan natives, strolling around with bun- 
dles of sugar cane over their shoulders ; 
Javanese sailors in their conical straw hats, 
buying parrots from turbaned Mohamme- 
dan Bugis; Chinese merchants buying sago 
bread from more naked natives, who carried 
it by a yoke and two slings like a pair of 
Dutch pails; more Javanese, repairing a 
proa plank with native adzes; and a con- 
stant stream of Aru hunters and fishermen, 
coming in with fowl, trepang, mother-of- 
pearl shells, birds, and coconut shells in 
baskets. For domestic pets there were pigs, 
kangaroos, goats, tame bobos (pelicans), and 
parrots everywhere, wandering at will about 
the street or swinging from a perch under 
the thatch porches. 

Then a native hunter came wandering by, 
with a spotted cuscus, or native opossum, 
hanging by its tail, and him the curator 
snared, to buy the specimen from him and 
engage the man for a guide to the blakang- 
tana , the jungle hinterland, next day. 

Tiring of the noisy scene at length, Dwight 
went inside and lay down on a cool rattan 
lounge, leaving Nicky to help sort collec- 
tion boxes with the curator. After reading 
16 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

awhile, he lay down the book with a sigh 
of content and looked idly up into the thatch 
that was thickly woven through the poles 
of their roof. Indolently gazing, he noticed 
a dark mass overhead, seemingly buried in 
the thatch. Examining it more carefully, 
he could see yellow and black marks, and 
concluded that it must be a tortoise shell 
that some one had left there. But the thing 
still fascinated him, and every little while 
he would look up at it again, while the others 
went on with the business of settling the 
house. Then a slight rustle in the thatch 
attracted him, and, gazing up at it steadily 
again, it suddenly resolved itself into a large 
snake, compactly coiled up in a kind of knot! 
Dwight’s jaw dropped as he detected the 
head and its bright eyes in the very center 
of the folds. 

“Good Lord, fellows!” he called out, jump- 
ing to his feet, “here’s a boa constrictor, a 
python! — up in our roof!” 

The curator jumped up the steps of the 
veranda in a bound. “Where! Show me 
him!” he demanded. 

“Right up there!” laughed Dwight, quiv- 
ering with excitement. “And making him- 
self at home just as nice as nice!” 

17 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


Sadok started to draw his parang, but 
the curator stopped him. 

“Wait!” he commanded. “We don’t want 
to spoil his skin.” 

Baderoon came running in. “Me kill’m! 
Me catch’m tailie! Me kill plenty snake on 
Bourn!” he yelled, begging the curator for 
permission to show them. 

The latter smiled quietly. “Clear out, 
boys — and watch the fun!” he said, picking 
up the lamp off the table and sweeping a 
lot of small things out of the way. “Ever 
see a native kill a python? I guess the house 
will stand it! Go get’m Baderoon-fellah!” 

Baderoon jumped for the rafters, and there 
was a violent commotion in the thatch as 
he dropped down with the tip of the boa’s 
tail in both hands. He and Sadok tugged 
away at it, soon ripping down about ten feet 
of the writhing coils, while the others ran 
laughing for the door. The commotion 
inside increased, and then there was a heavy 
thump and the crash of chairs and tables 
upset and flying about, and then Baderoon 
emerged, running down the steps with about 
thirty feet of snake behind him, twisting 
and lashing with its thick coils. The python 
swept everything with him and made a last 
18 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


stand with its neck hooked about a veranda 
post, while the boys yelled and catcalled 
with glee. Then Baderoon tore him loose 
and, running fast, flew with him toward 
the jungle, where, stopping suddenly, he 
snapped the snake’s long body like a whip- 
lash and smashed his head against a tree. 

“ Wheel” yelled Nicky, delightedly, from 
the veranda. “Me for the next one! Gee! 
I’d like to try that stunt!” 

But the python was not nearly dead yet, 
and he started to squirm off into the cane. 
Baderoon was on him like a flash, and, 
grabbing the tail, he snapped him against 
the tree again. Nicky, prancing down from 
the veranda, dashed in and fumbled at the 
writhing coils, to try it himself; but with 
a quick twist the powerful tail fastened 
itself around his ankle, and a huge, thick 
loop of the snake rose and curled itself tight 
around his waist. The boy gasped, crushed 
breathless, and it looked serious for a time 
as Dwight and the curator rushed down to 
the rescue, but suddenly there was a bright 
flash of steel, and Sadok’s parang met the 
next loop coming down over the boy’s head 
and clove it nearly in two. 

'‘Me sorry, Orang-kaya,” said Sadok, as 
19 


3 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


the snake collapsed and Nicky squirmed free 
of the aimless coils. 44 Me spoil’m specimen?'' 

“You did just right, Sadok!" said the 
curator, heartily. “He could have crushed 
Nicky to death, even in his last throes — " 

* 4 Him plenty debbil-debbil ! ’ ' interrupted 
Baderoon, coming up from freeing Nicky. 

4 4 White boy nebber, nebber let snake-fellah 
catch'm first! Mus' run with him-a tailie — 
fast!" he explained, earnestly. 

“Well," said the curator, after the Fat 
One had been guyed to everybody's satis- 
faction, “le's go in for a look-see. Perhaps 
some more interesting creatures are camp- 
ing out in our bungalow!" 

They explored every nook and cranny of 
the hut, dislodging a few kangaroo mice, 
which were captured and added to the col- 
lections after hilarious chases, but no larger 
visitors were found, and no poisonous snakes, 
rare throughout the archipelago, were dis- 
covered. The curator set the lamp on a 
table out on the veranda, after supper, and 
they sat around it, collecting the rare moths 
and beetles attracted by its light. As a 
nightcap, the brilliant and wonderful clear- 
winged moth came fluttering in, and the 
curator snatched at it avidly with his net. 

20 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


“ Cocytia d'urviller /” he gasped, taking 
the gorgeous prize from the net. “Boys, 
we are in luck! There are not five of these 
in all the museums of America! I guess 
that will be about all for to-night !” 

The party turned in, and long before dawn 
were awakened by the native hunter at the 
veranda steps. Gulping some hot coffee and 
downing a rasher of bacon and eggs, they 
slung on their knapsacks, grabbed their guns, 
and followed him to the boat for a trip to 
the mainland in the mighty jungles of Aru, 
where dwelt the great bird of paradise. 


II 


INTO THE JUNGLE 

T HE jungle of the mainland of Aru came 
down to the very water’s edge. A nar- 
row strip of sandy beach, lined with nodding 
palms, was strewn with fallen trees, bare and 
sun dried, and whole colonies of hermit crabs 
on the beach told of the teeming life of trop- 
ical nature pushed to the very verge of the 
sea. Their party landed from the village 
key of old coral growth, and stepped ashore 
at the end of a native path that was a mere 
tunnel through the undergrowth. Never 
had they seen palms in such profusion or 
so tall and magnificent, the bare trunks 
rising through lesser growths a hundred 
feet high, where the great fronds of leaves 
spread green umbrellas far overhead. The 
tree ferns, their first in this Papuan land, 
rose feathery and beautiful, with stems thirty 
feet high, above which shot up the lacy 
fronds, giant replicas of our northern hot- 
house varieties. The ubiquitous banana was 
22 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


everywhere, growing wild in the forest, gen- 
erally in the open glades of pandanus palms, 
whose scraggly trees twisted high in the 
misty air, with spikes of leaves like century 
plants at their branch tips. And every now 
and then, through the dim vistas of vine 
and creeper, they could note a dense thicket 
where a giant fig tree grew, surrounded by 
its own forest of aerial root shoots a hundred 
feet in diameter. 

Down on the jungle floor scuttled millions 
of silent hermit crabs, or great orange-and- 
red land crabs popped down their holes. 
One had but to look an instant to realize 
that the jungle was alive with lizards, black, 
green, and gray, all motionless on limb or 
root, staring at the explorers with bright 
beady eyes — to flash into a green streak of 
movement at the first motion to catch them. 

It was early, with the faint light of dawn 
hardly penetrating the green depths all about 
them as they went silently along in single 
file, listening to the chorus of bird life in 
the tree tops. The shrill scream of lories 
and parakeets, the hoarse cry of the tree 
pigeons, and the incessant chirrup of smaller 
birds awoke the jungle with the voices of 
the bird world. Then the sun shot up in 
23 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


a flaming fire into the pale tropical heavens, 
and its rays lit up the glades, showing huge 
yellow-and-black spiders on thick ropy webs 
swung in every open spot, and gorgeous 
butterflies in metallic blues and greens sail- 
ing through the sunlit vistas, causing many 
a stop and chase. 

A cry rang startlingly through the tree 
tops. “Wawk! Wawk! Wawk! — Wok, wok 
wok!” it said, remarkably like the caw of 
our northern crow. 

The curator stopped and listened, his 
hand to ear to locate the direction of the 
sound. “The great bird of paradise, boys!” 
he exclaimed, exultingly. 

“Why, it sounds exactly like a crow flying 
through our home woods!” cried Dwight. 

“Sure! It’s the tropical crow. They all 
belong to the crow family, only this is what 
Nature can do with the crow when you give 
her plenty of heat and sunlight!” retorted 
the curator. “There he goes again, off to 
the left!” 

“Him go-stop sacal61i tree,” put in Sadok, 
who had been listening, fumbling at the 
cover of his dart quiver. 

“Yes? The sacaleli, the plumage dance,” 
agreed the curator. ‘‘They meet in some 
24 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

large tree, where the males dance and show 
off their plumes before the females. Bade- 
roon, ask’m hunter-fellah if we go catch’m 
sacaleli tree, all right,” he said, turning to 
the negro. 

There were a few grunts between the 
Papuan and the Aru hunter, who nodded 
stolidly and led on. The party quickened 
their pace as the path led upward through 
the hills. Then Sadok stopped and raised 
his long iron wood sumpitan. It poised for 
an instant, pointing up into a wide-branched 
bamboo clump, and, before their eyes could 
pick out the mark, came the soft plop! of 
the dart as it left the sumpitan like a streak 
of light. Followed the fall of a reddish 
bird, tumbling down through the leaves, 
and Baderoon dashed into the thicket to 
retrieve it. He brought back a jewel of 
fluttering fire in his hands. Of an intense 
metallic red, its throat was of deep orange, 
and from under the wings jutted out two 
little fronds of gray aigrettes tipped with 
broad bands of lustrous metallic green. 

“The king bird of paradise!” cried the 
curator, holding the feathered beauty in his 
hands and examining it admiringly. “Great 
business, Sadok! What a wonderful bird!” 

25 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


“Rare, too, isn’t it?” asked Dwight. 

“You’re dead right it is! We’ll be lucky 
if we get two of them this expedition!” said 
the curator. 

Just then Nicky, who had come back 
from a foray with his hands full of lizards 
and crabs, had a flash of inspiration. “Put 
him on a twig, quick!” he yelled. “I’ll get 
a colored photo of him!” 

“Good idea, kid!” smiled the curator. 
“That will be something new.” 

The bird was alive yet, only partly par- 
alyzed by the poison, and his eyes were 
bright and open, and the little tufts on his 
breast still erect. He sat quietly on a twig 
in the sunlight, while Nicky set up a fold- 
ing steel tripod and took three color plates 
as fast as he could change holders. 

“That ’ll be about worth the whole trip 
to me!” he cried. “Wait till the director 
of the Museum sees that print, eh, Mr. 
Baldwin?” he chuckled. 

The curator grinned indulgently. He 
loved Nick’s intense enthusiasms, partic- 
ularly when they led to something of sci- 
entific value. Sadok wrapped the prize 
carefully in a cone of pandanus leaf and they 
started out again. After about an hour’s 
26 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

travel they came to a high plateau where 
the creepers and hanging vines were less 
abundant and one could see for some dis- 
tance under the forest floor. A grove of 
tall tree trunks loomed up ahead, with bare, 
scant-leaved branches. Each had a sort of 
leaf hut, built far up in the fork. 

They skirted the grove, silently, the cura- 
tor explaining how the native hunters secured 
paradise birds by lying in wait for them 
under the hut, aiming with a blunt-headed 
arrow at the males during the dance. Their 
own hunter paid no attention to the grove, 
but led on for a mile farther across the pla- 
teau. Then he stopped and pointed up into 
the trees. Here was a similar grove, but much 
smaller, and buried far deeper in the jungle. 
Evidently it was his own secret hunting ground. 
Grunting a few words to Baderoon, he undid 
the belt of woven fiber about his waist and 
made a loop of it around the tree. Then, 
alternately walking up it and shifting the belt, 
he ascended the bare trunk to the leaf screen 
built in its fork, and disappeared. 

“Him stop, go-shoot ’m goby-goby/’ ex- 
plained Baderoon in a stage whisper. “We- 
fellah go-hide and catch’m spec’men when 
he drop.” 


27 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


They all sought hiding places in the under- 
brush and waited. After a time came a 
distant, “Wawk! Wawk! Wawk!" answered 
by another bird farther off in the jungle, 
and then by still another. Like a flock of 
crows calling to the assembly, the boys 
could hear the paradise birds gathering. 
Then, like a flash of shimmering light, a 
great golden bird, eighteen inches long, came 
dropping down from over the tree tops. He 
lit in the tree farthest off from the hunter's, 
preened himself awhile, and then lifted up 
his voice in the call of his kind. An answer- 
ing cry heralded the approach of another 
one, and soon he too dropped down and 
joined the other. 

“ That's bad — they're gathering in the 
wrong tree," whispered Nicky to Dwight, 
who lay by his side. 

“Wait," cautioned his chum. “We can 
shoot and get a few, if worse comes to worst. 
I’d far rather get a nest or an egg. There's 
not one in any museum in the world, the 
curator tells me. Look — there’s a female!" 

Nicky looked up to see a dull, coffee- 
colored bird perch down quietly on a near-by 
branch. The two males at once began to 
ruffle and preen their long golden plumes. 

28 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


Peering through his glasses, Dwight could 
even see the pale-blue beak, the delicate 
straw yellow of head and neck, and the 
rich, scaly feathers of metallic emerald green 
on the throat. From under the wings came 
the long two-foot plumes of intense glossy 
orange-brown color, and they ruffled and 
spread in the breeze as the male bird shook 
them for the admiration of the female. A 
glorified crow, a crow raised to the most 
unimaginable hues of bottled sunlight and 
all the vivid splendor of the tropics, was 
the great bird of paradise! As Dwight looked, 
he began to dance, hopping up and down 
on the limb, each motion spreading the 
glorious plumes and letting them fall like 
down. His rival was dancing also, and 
three more males and another female joined 
them. 

Dwight crawled over to the curator, who 
was watching the whole performance avidly 
through his glasses. 

“Our native hunter's out of luck, sir!" 
he muttered. “He’ll never be able to hit 
them from his tree, and if he misses one the 
whole flock will fly off. What ’ll we do — 
shoot?" 

“Presently," whispered the curator. “Go 
29 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


get Nicky, and we’ll each pick a bird and 
fire. They may fly over to the hunter’s tree 
yet, but I can see that they’re all as sus- 
picious as our own crows. The tree they 
are in seems to suit them all right.” 

Another male flew in as he spoke, and the 
whole tree top was filled with hopping, 
flashing flames of golden color, a sight in 
itself that was worth traveling many miles 
to see. Dwight soon returned, with Nicky 
crawling behind him, and the three lay and 
watched the birds, far overhead. 

“Well, boys, I guess we’d better fire,” 
said the curator, at length. “That native 
may try to shoot from his tree and spoil the 
whole thing. Dwight, you pick a female, 
and Nicky and I will each get one of the 
males, and then we’ll do what we can with 
the other barrel.” 

They raised their guns and were about 
to shoot, when one of the male birds silently 
loosed his hold and came tumbling down! 

“Wait! Sadok!” whispered the curator, 
restraining them energetically. “I’d quite 
forgotten about him and his sumpitan!” 
Another bird fell. Somewhere, deep in the 
jungle, that silent, deadly blowgun in Sadok’s 
hands was bringing them down. At long 
30 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


intervals two more birds fell, and then there 
was a slight tock! in the branches and they 
could see through the glasses the short dart 
sticking in the bark. The other birds raised 
alarmed cries at it and prepared to fly. 

“Now!” cried the curator. “Get a couple 
of females !” The guns barked as the startled 
birds took wing, while two dull-colored hen 
birds and another male came tumbling down. 
Then they all rushed over to pick up the 
specimens. 

The native hunter came dropping hur- 
riedly down out of his tree, gave them one 
wild look of terror, and bolted incontinently 
into the forest, shrieking an unintelligible 
gibberish as he ran. Baderoon burst into a 
yell of laughter and tumbled on the ground 
with merriment. 

“Now what in the dickens ails him ?” 
grinned the curator, looking after the flying 
native from the bird in his hand. “Call 
him back, Baderoon.’ ’ 

“Taboo! Yow-yowri! Bewitched! Debbil- 
debbil!” gasped Baderoon from the ground. 
“Him see plenty debbil-debbil ! Bird, he 
go-dead — no see um arrow, no hear gun! 
Him no come back!” he cackled, squirming 
in an agony of mirth. 

31 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


“Get up, fool! Go catch’m!” ordered 
the curator, sternly, kicking the helpless 
negro to his feet. Baderoon ran off, still 
howling with delight. 

“He’ll never catch that coon in ten thou- 
sand years!” chuckled Nicky. “Sadok’s 
blowgun scared all the hair off his head. 
But — how are we going to get out of the 
jungle without him, though?” 

“We’ll camp right here,” declared the 
curator. “It’s always home wherever we 
are, and there’s lots to do.” 

“All right, and, as I have no camp to 
make, I’m going to find a nest or an egg if 
it takes all day!” declared Nicky. “I 
haven’t really begun to study this jungle 
yet, you know!” 

“Not a bad idea,” agreed the curator, 
heartily. “Take Sadok along with you, so 
that you’ll turn up sometime,” he laughed. 
“Dwight and I will make camp and skin 
out the birds.” 

The grove was an excellent one to camp 
in, clear and open under the great trees, and 
Dwight started his camp at once. Their 
system was an original and elastic one, each 
man for himself, each one eating or sleeping 
when and where he pleased. They had 
32 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

long ago discarded the old-fashioned camp 
where one man cooked for the crowd and 
all had to be in at mealtimes. Such a sys- 
tem was too rigid and conventional for such 
diverse tastes and occupations as these three. 

Dwight opened his pack and unlimbered 
his steel pickax, driving down into the lava 
rock with its point to make holes for tent 
pegs and clear out rocks on his sleeping site. 
He chose a spot covered with small bushes 
like huckleberries, filled' with a windfall of 
dried leaves. Here he spread out his sleep- 
ing bag, and over it went a light tent fly, 
on a rope stretched over two forked stakes. 
From the rope he hung a mosquito screen, 
with a small ring of cane cut in the jungle 
and bent into a hoop a foot in diameter, so 
as to hold the net gauze clear of his face. 
This hoop was tied inside the square of net 
about a foot below the central peak from 
which it hung, and the folds of the net draped 
over the head of the bag. Dwight’s sleep- 
ing bag was waterproof and insectproof, so 
that, with the net hung over his face and 
the fly over that, forming a sun and rain 
shade, he was well protected from insects 
and wet weather on very little weight — about 
five pounds all told for tent and bedding. 

33 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


In front of his camp the lad built a small 
stone fireplace, with a row of his little food 
sacks hung handy around it on cross poles. 
He set about making a batter of flour, com 
meal, dried egg powder, dried milk, and 
baking powder, and soon had cooked himself 
a pile of flapjacks. With the body of a 
paradise bird grilling on a forked stick, and 
a tin of tea steeping on the hearth, he was 
as well fed and comfortable as anywhere 
else in the world. After lunch he seized 
his pickax and went collecting for insects 
and beetles in the forest, the sharp pick 
point digging and prying into the bark of 
prone trees, where many a new form of 
jewel-bodied tropical beetle came to his 
collection box. 

The curator had silently melted into the 
jungle, whence soon appeared the brown 
glint of sunlight from the tent fly spread 
over his hammock. A great bag of netting 
enveloped the latter, and it could be drawn 
in tight by a string after he had gotten 
inside. A handful of rockahominy washed 
down with a drink from his canteen and a 
bite of grilled bird satisfied him for lunch. 
After skinning out the paradise birds and 
hanging them in a row from a line stretched 
34 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


between two trees to keep them from the 
ants, he disappeared into the jungle on his 
favorite occupation of studying bird life. 

Dwight found a bewildering world of new 
entomology awaiting him. His pickax, net, 
and magnifying glass were busy every moment, 
and the boy quivered with excitement, rush- 
ing hither and yon through the jungle, now 
after a leaf-winged butterfly, which would 
disappear with maddening legerdemain; now 
stooping to watch a fight between two male 
Brenthidce , long armored beetles with fight- 
ing jaws at the end of a slender proboscis 
like a spear; now urged to frantic pursuit 
of the rare homed deer fly. The mystery 
of the leaf -winged butterfly was solved when 
he had examined a bush on which it lit more 
closely. One of the leaves turned out to 
be the creature itself, with wings folded, 
motionless on the stem, the under surface 
of its wings so closely resembling the leaves 
that only the closest scrutiny could detect 
the difference. 

By late afternoon he returned to camp 
by compass, his box full of new and won- 
derful insects. 

4 ‘Look at the day’s plunder, Mr. Bald- 
win!” cried the youth, enthusiastically. He 
4 35 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


drew out the cork slabs from his carrying 
tin, covered with the heterogenous collec- 
tion impaled on pins. 

“These homed flies are a real find! ,, 
exclaimed the curator, interestedly, after 
examining the butterflies and beetles. “They 
go to prove a great scientific fact — first 
propounded as a theory by Mr. Wallace, 
the English naturalist — that Aru was once 
part of New Guinea. Those little flies can 
be explained in no other way. Common 
in New Guinea, it would be impossible for 
them to travel the hundred and fifty miles 
from the New Guinea coast to Am. To- 
morrow, if Nicky does not come back, we’ll 
go on a trip to see another curious phenom- 
enon, the salt-water channels that divide 
the islands of Am. They are tme rivers, 
yet have no flow other than the tide at their 
mouths. How do you explain that, Dwight?” 

The boy confessed that he could not. 
“Come to think of it, sir, these are the only 
islands in the world that have such chan- 
nels,” he cried out over the novelty of it. 

As Nicky did not put in an appearance 
that night, they set out next morning north- 
ward, leaving Baderoon to skin out birds 
in camp. The curator did not worry over 
36 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


Nicky. In his rucksack the lad had carried 
his odd nightgear, of an old bathing suit 
with the armholes sewed up to pull over his 
bed, a pair of extra socks to cover his arms 
and another for his feet. So dressing up 
to go to bed, Nicky would turn in on a leaf 
patch, secure from insects and snakes, and, 
with Sadok to guide him, would be abun- 
dantly able to care for himself. 

After several hours’ travel to the north 
the going became more rocky and the veg- 
etation sparse and thorny. Soon open sky- 
line appeared ahead, and then they came 
upon the rocky cliffs of basic limestone that 
border the south bank of the river Majkor, 
which separates the Aru mainlands of May- 
kor and Kobror. The north bank was high 
jungle, and up and down its reaches it was 
a true river, a deep, narrow channel wind- 
ing through the jungle as far as the eye 
could reach. Yet its waters were salt. 

“That’s really wonderful, sir!” cried 
Dwight, enthusiastically, when he had 
grasped the full significance of it. “Lots 
of small islands like England, for instance, 
have rivers; but they are true rivers, rising 
in the mountains somewhere. Others have 
salt straits dividing them from the main- 
37 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


land, like Staten Island, at home. This 
channel can’t be a fissure, for it winds and 
turns just like a river. What is Wallace’s 
theory, Mr. Baldwin?” he asked, giving it up. 

“The true one, I think,” replied the 
curator. “The west coast of Aru is deep 
water; the east, a shallow pearl sea, clear 
over to New Guinea. That sea was undoubt- 
edly formed by gradual subsidence of the 
sea bottom. It is only three hundred feet 
deep ; so that would not take long for geology 
to accomplish. The coast of New Jersey is 
rising two feet a century. At no very dis- 
tant date, then, New Guinea and Aru were 
one big continent, with all the sea between 
lowlands — very like those that extend now 
back from the coast to the Great Precipice 
over where we are soon going. The rivers, 
then, like the Outanata and the Mimika, 
must have flowed through those lowlands, 
and these channels of Aru were part of 
them, emptying into the sea on the west 
coast of Aru. Can’t you see how important 
this little trip of ours is, now? This river 
can tell us something of the mineralogy of 
the' unexplored interior of New Guinea! And 
without our ever going there, for that matter!” 

“Sure it can — if we had a long line and a 
38 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


grappling hook to dredge with!” said Dwight, 
practically. 

"We have the former!” smiled the curator, 
producing out of his rucksack a hank of 
strong green Banks line, "and we’ll make 
a grappling.” 

Near by grew a tree of the Erythina fam- 
ily, its profuse scarlet blossoms a grand note 
of color against the gray cliffs. Thousands 
of swallows swooped about the latter, and 
the curator eyed them absorbedly. 

"Eh?” he exclaimed. "Dwight, you cut 
a length from that Erythina, with a whorl 
of branches at one end. and make a grap- 
pling, while I go on a look-see.” 

Dwight drew his pickax and fashioned a 
wooden grappling hook with its keen hatchet 
blade. When he got through the curator 
had returned from the cliffs, bearing a gel- 
atinous bird nest. 

"Here is the edible bird nest of China!” 
he exclaimed. "I heard that they got them 
on Aru, as well as in the cliff caves of Borneo. 
These banks must be the Aru collecting 
ground. Ever eat one?” 

"No!” shuddered Dwight. 

"Not half bad. We’ll have this one for des- 
sert, to-day. And now le’s see that grappling . ’ ’ 
39 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 

He bound on the end of the cod line, and 
they found a dead trunk which would form 
a tolerable raft. Dropping the grappling, 
with a heavy stone lashed to it, they waited 
for a short drift, paying out line, and then 
began to haul. It soon struck something 
solid. Pulling it in, a great frond of fan 
coral came to the surface, and attached to 
its roots was the stone it grew on. The 
curator cleaned it and examined its struc- 
ture avidly. 

“ First news of New Guinea!” he chuckled. 
“This stone formed part of the river drift, 
long ago. It is — slate !' 1 he barked, joy- 
ously. “And here is a small bit of fossil 
on one surface. See it? That means coal 
measures! It confirms my idea that an 
island three hundred miles wide and four- 
teen hundred miles long can't be all vol- 
canic, or all coral! There must be stratified, 
geological formations in the interior, coal 
measures, iron ore — all that civilization needs. 
Try again!” 

The next two casts brought up sea ferns, 
with more chunks of limestone and slate, 
but the third gave them a yellowish, heavy 
stone, sandy and streaked with brown. 

“Ore! Iron ore!” yelled the curator, before 

40 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

even the mud was washed off it. “ Regular 
liT scientific expedition of our own, eh, 
Dwight !” 

The boy took the next cast. He brought 
up a heavy, reddish stone that the curator 
examined with the greatest interest. “That's 
cinnabar, red oxide of mercury, unless I 
miss my guess. It may be red iron ore, but 
seems too crystalline for that. We’ll keep 
this, Dwight, until I can get back to the 
bungalow and make some chemical tests.” 

“Is it valuable?” asked the boy, curiously. 

“Very!” replied the curator, abstractedly. 
He was off on one of his mental explora- 
tions — explorer’s dreams for the future wel- 
fare of the world that come to him who opens 
up new territory for mankind. His very 
silence awakened a strange presentment of 
wonders to come in the boy’s mind. Gee! 
it was great to delve into the world’s secrets, 
where no white man had ever been before! 
He longed for the time for the New Guinea 
trip to come. A few days more on Aru, 
and then — into a wild and dangerous country, 
in search of new discoveries that might prove 
of the greatest value to the civilized world. 
It was wonderful to be part of this expedition! 


Ill 


PIRATE VISITATIONS 

M EANWHILE Nicky and Sadok had 
. been exploring into the untracked 
jungle to the southward. The low hills of 
Aru grew more rocky, and the rank jungle 
gave way to sparse open growth, with rocky 
soil and wild grass swales here and there. 
It was hot, out here in the sun, and their 
canteens were in frequent use. Presently a 
wild brush turkey jumped from cover and 
ran cackling and gobbling through the bush 
growth. He went like a deer, as Nicky 
whipped out the Officer's Colt and fired on 
the run. At the same time Sadok’ s sum- 
pitan coughed and its dart flashed across the 
grass tops. 

“ Doubled!” shouted Nicky, as the turkey 
tumbled and lay kicking stiffly. They ran 
out to retrieve it. Only the dart of the 
sumpitan stuck in its side. 

“ Missed, by hookey!” laughed Nicky at 
himself. “ Judged by Dyak standards, I’m 

42 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

a mere swine, I suppose. Eh, Sadok? Say, 
what poison are you using now?” he exclaimed 
suddenly. “That turkey fell over like a 
shot. The upas-tree stuff takes some time 
• — three hours for a man, they tell me.” 

Sadok held up the little pot of bamboo for 
for him to smell. “Upas vine, Orang-kichil ” 
(little chief), he explained. “Him different 
tree. Red bark. Ver’ quick !” 

“Smells like strychnia to me,” said the 
boy, wonderingly. “Beats all how nature 
has provided a specimen of that family of 
trees all over the tropics throughout the 
world. India, the nux vomica; South Amer- 
ica, the wourali; here, some new one that I 
don’t know. I’ll ask the curator some day.” 

They broiled two great steaks from the 
breast of the turkey for the midday meal, for 
the poison from the darts does not reduce the 
edibility at all, and Sadok stowed the legs for 
further food. After the lunch they set out 
in a generally southeasterly direction, as 
Nicky knew it would bring them at length 
to another of those odd channels that divide 
Aru, and he wanted to see something of 
Vorkai, the southernmost island. A large 
screw pine came in sight. Its almost bare 
branches twisted high into the bright sun- 
43 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


light, and the spikes of daggerlike leaves 
growing in clusters at the branch tips drew 
an exclamation of pleasure from Sadok, for 
he was nearly out of pandanus leaf to wrap 
“spec’mens” in. They went over to it. 

“Hi!” called Nicky. “Look who’s here!” 

A large brown animal was climbing around 
up near the tops. 

“Tree kangaroo. Get him! The curator 
will want one!” cried the boy, drawing his 
revolver. He aimed carefully, and at the 
report the animal flinched, but seemed to 
maintain its hold in the branches. He fired 
again, with the same result. The tree kan- 
garoo now moved sluggishly toward another 
branch. 

“Shoot, Sadok! I must have hit him, but 
he sure can carry a lot of lead!” 

Sadok raised the blowgun to his lips and 
held his cupped fist over his mouth. Filling 
his lungs, he blew a full breath. The dart 
soared up into the tree top and they saw it 
sticking from the animal’s side. Presently 
his limbs grew limp and he partly fell, but 
his long, hooked claws caught in the branches 
and hung. He made no further move. 

“Dead as a mackerel, but I’ll have to 
swarm up after him!” declared Nicky, emphat- 
44 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


ically. He was a fearless climber, and he 
shinned the trunk and was soon in the 
branches. Worming up one of them, he 
reached the tree kangaroo. It was like its 
cousins, the wallaby of New Guinea and 
the great gray kangaroo of Australia, but 
with heavy, coarse fur and long, hooked 
claws especially adapted to climbing. 

“Hit him both times, myself,” he called 
down: “Gorry! but he’s tenacious of life!” 
He detached the animal from its hold and 
dropped it down. It weighed some sixty 
pounds. They were an hour skinning it, 
after which Sadok put away some of the 
choicest meat, for he never let an opportunity 
for food go by in the jungle. 

Then Nicky spied a great blue butterfly, 
the Papilio ulysses , soaring through the tops 
of the screw pine overhead. They set off 
in hot pursuit, with the skin of the kangaroo 
hanging to his belt. 

“Dwight will want this fellow!” urged 
Nicky, stumbling through thickets and over 
stony and coralline ground. Hermit crabs 
scuttled out of their way in the underbrush; 
lizards of every shade streaked across under 
their feet, but still the lad kept his eyes on 
that magnificent prize which persistently 
45 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


flew high. At length it came down and 
alighted on a moist spot in the earth, evi- 
dently thirsty. He crept up and dropped 
his helmet over the great metallic-blue beauty. 

'‘Hooray! What a prize for Dwight ! How 
in thunder am I ever going to carry it, though?” 
He started to pin it to his helmet, but Sadok 
shook his head. 

“Him all tore, in bushes,” he objected. 
“Me show’m.” Searching the jungle awhile, 
he presently came back with a broad, flat 
cactus leaf which he was busily paring of 
thorns as he walked. Then he slit it open 
with his kriss and gouged out a recess for the 
body of the butterfly in its pulpy interior. 
Lining it with flat pieces of pandanus, he 
was ready for Papilio ulysses, who was forth- 
with spread out, flat winged, and then securely 
bound in his green prison with thongs of rattan. 

“Some sandwich!” grinned Nicky as it 
was slipped into the map pocket of his ruck- 
sack. “Worth about fifty dollars just as it 
stands! Won’t I have some fun with old 
Dwight, with it, though!” 

They abandoned collecting for the time, 
as the canteens were running low and water 
was getting to be a problem unless they ex- 
pected to live on what could be poured from 
46 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


the air plants that grew profusely in the dry 
jungle. A small ravine running downhill 
looked promising, and they climbed down 
into it. After half a mile it grew swampy, 
and soon a small, clear stream of fresh water 
developed. They were filling the canteens 
at the nearest hollow when voices came 
through the jungle, the chatter of a child 
and the deep cackle of an old man, both 
speaking Papuan. Sadok and Nicky waited. 
Presently both appeared, coming down to the 
brook. The man was an almost naked, mop- 
haired Aru native, carrying a bow and quiver; 
the pickaninny wore only a string around 
his fat middle, and had a tiny bow in his 
hands. Both jumped and dashed back into 
the jungle, with grunts and squeals of fear, 
at sight of Nicky. 

The latter laughed and called after them 
reassuringly. Presently the pickaninny ap- 
peared, climbing a sapling trunk like a 
small tree frog. He stopped, peering around 
the trunk at them curiously, his feet dug 
into the bark with bunched-up toes, his sinewy 
little hands wound around the trunk, while 
his inquisitive face looked at them with a 
half-fearful expression. 

Nicky smiled at him and dug into his 
47 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


pockets. He fished out a small bag of beads 
and held out a few of the sparkling trinkets 
in his palm. The youngster's eyes snapped. 
They could see the old man peering at them 
through the underbrush, arrow on bow, 
afraid to come out at all. 

Nicky beckoned to the boy and motioned 
to give him some. He finally descended the 
tree, and with many advances and retreats 
ventured out to clutch the beads in his small 
paw. Then he dashed back into the jungle, 
where a childish yell and the sound of a slap 
told that the old man had seized him and 
rifled him of his beads. 

Nicky called out the pickaninny and gave 
him more. Then the old man poked his 
head out, and Sadok spoke to him in Malay. 
He knew that tongue enough to talk, and 
presently they were exchanging news. With 
much coaxing he was finally got out where 
Nicky could pour him quite a handful of 
the green, blue, red, and yellow trinkets. 
Much impressed, he jerked his thumb over 
shoulder and invited them to visit their 
village, which, he said, lay a short distance on. 

They followed up what appeared to be 
something of a trail, and soon the jungle 
cleared and a blue arm of the sea lay before 
48 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

them, with a large island offshore. Nicky 
took it to be Varkai, but his attention was 
soon called to the village itself. It was of 
two palm huts, built on piles about seven 
feet above the ground, and the place was 
crowded with natives, most of whom gave 
one astonished look at Nicky and then bolted 
for the jungle. 

The old man called them back, and pres- 
ently the orang-kaya , or chief, came toward 
him, holding out his hand for more beads. 
It was not long before Nicky was the center 
of an excited throng of chattering Papuans, 
who fingered his clothing and pranced around 
him with characteristic native merriment. 
Nicky was a whole circus in himself, he began 
to appreciate. Men, women, and children 
never seemed to tire of standing and gazing 
at him, after which they would usually do a 
somersault or roll on the ground with explo- 
sions of boisterous laughter. To them he 
and his clothes were the funniest thing they 
had ever looked at. 

As it was growing late, Sadok arranged 
for a night's lodgings. A space about ten 
by twenty feet at the end of one of the huts 
was cleared off and turned over to their use. 
Here they laid down their few belongings 
49 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


and sat down on mats to watch the strange 
life around them. A clay floor behind a 
partition served for a fireplace, where Sadok 
set about cooking the kangaroo meat. The 
rest of the hut was jammed with natives 
talking and laughing incessantly, only ceas- 
ing when their eyes were fully occupied in 
staring at him. 

In the midst of it all, a yell, 11 Bajak! 
Bajak!” (“Pirates! Pirates!”) arose, and 
everyone tumbled out of the hut and poured 
down to the beach. Great guard fires piled 
up along shore were lit, and their lurid glare 
lighted up the whole scene; the proas of the 
natives hauled up on the beach, the warriors 
dancing along the shore, brandishing their 
bows and spears and yelling defiance, and 
the two huts back a short distance, with the 
black wall of the jungle behind them, made 
a wild picture that long remained vivid in 
Nicky’s memory. 

Nicky and Sadok had come down, eager 
to be in the fray, and it seemed to the boy 
that never had he been in so savage a spot 
on the earth as in this forgotten corner of 
Aru, with native warriors around him and a 
pirate ship from the New Guinea coast some- 
where out there on the sea. 

so 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


Presently he made her out a long double 
proa, or catamaran, with one big lateen 
sail; a small lakatoi, with at least fifty war- 
riors in her, the orang-kaya told him. She 
came on swiftly, under both paddles and 
sails, and, when some fifty yards off the beach, 
opened fire with the flash and bang of Singa- 
pore muskets loaded with black powder. 

Bows twanged all about Nicky, javelins 
flew through the air, Sadok’s sumpitan 
coughed. Some of the younger warriors 
turned to run at the sound of gunfire, but 
the older men held steady, for their homes 
and ships would be plundered if defeated. 
Nicky drew his revolver and opened fire in 
return. The heavy thunder of its .38 special 
cartridges, close at hand, made all the war- 
riors near him jump and run, but the fact of 
six flashes along shore and the execution it 
evidently did among the pirates caused them 
to stop paddling and haul in sheet as the 
lakatoi swung around. 

“Now, then, Sadok, launch one of those 
proas and after 'em and we’ll have ’em on 
the run!” barked Nicky, seizing the psycho- 
logical moment to attack. Sadok called on 
the orang-kaya , and he and a dozen warriors 
sprang to the nearest proa and launched her, 
5 Si 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


Nicky reloading swiftly. As she put out 
'for the pirate lakatoi he opened up with a 
second burst of pistol shots. The pirate 
was now making all sail out to sea, the few 
flashes from her native muskets shpwing 
that most of her crew were paddling hard 
away from them. Presently her mat sail 
came down and she paddled into the eye of 
the wind, where their own proa could not 
follow. Nicky shot a third burst after them 
as the range widened out of bow shot. 

“Gee! the curator told me that New 
Guinea pirates still attacked the villages in 
the wilder part of Aru, but I couldn’t have 
believed it!” he muttered to himself. “Now 
I’ve been in it— and we drove them off! 
Must be a fine country we’re going to, what 
Sadok!” 

“Plenty bad mans ober dere!” agreed 
Sadok. “Mus’ shoot all time.” 

They picked up a few dead men out of the 
dark waters. Hideously streaked with white 
clay, they wore long white boars’ tusks 
through their noses, and had a peculiar breast 
guard, made of rows of boars’ tusks one above 
the other, woven in a kind of net of palm fiber. 
A keen, flat bamboo knife floating in the water 
gave Nicky a clew as to the tribe. 

52 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

“Tugeri!” he exclaimed. “Head hunters. 
They were after heads and loot, Sadok! A 
sudden attack and a quick getaway is their 
style. Last year they appeared suddenly 
inside the barbed wire of the Dutch fort at 
Merauke and decapitated six Javanese and 
got away before the garrison could get out 
after them. We’ll have a time, with either 
them or the Outanatas!” 

The proa returned to shore amid the shouts 
and rejoicings of all the village capering 
about the beach. Nicky and Sadok, utterly 
weary, retired to their portion of the hut to 
sleep, after the first burst of enthusiasm had 
died down. But the natives made an all- 
night orgy of it. Nicky put on his bathing 
suit headgear and his night socks over his 
arms and wrists, and turned in on a palm- 
fiber mat, while mosquitoes hummed about 
him and the noise and shouting and laughter 
on shore dulled away in his drowsy ears. 

Next day they bade good-by to the chief. 
He had a present to make, it seemed, in 
return for the white man’s services in repelling 
their visitors of the night before. Out of a 
fetish bag, that held evidently the treasures 
of the entire village, he took a parcel care- 
fully wrapped in cotton. Unwinding it, he 
53 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


drew out the skin of a bird of more than 
ordinary interest. Reverently he unwrapped 
the last of its bindings, and handed it to 
Nicky with a smile of grateful pleasure. 

“Gorry!” muttered the boy, as he received 
the present before the whole tribe. “If I’m 
not wrong, that’s the rarest of the rare — the 
magnificent bird of paradise! Won’t the 
curator be tickled, though!” 

It was a small bird, but brilliant in the 
extreme of plumage. The head was covered 
with small, brown, velvety feathers, but 
back of its neck arose a fan-shaped ruffle of 
the most brilliant yellow, backed by a second 
fan of intense metallic orange. The whole 
of the breast was rich, deep green, in change- 
able hues of peacock and purple. The tail 
was formed of two curved plumes of delicate 
metallic brown, which curved in airy spirals 
— a feathered gem as rich in coloring as the 
vividest-hued humming bird, but far larger. 

“The only one!” managed the chief, in 
Malay, as Nicky bowed his thanks. 

“I’ll bet it is! But two have been found 
in all New Guinea. This is the first reported 
from Aru. Had it long, Chief?” 

“Many years. No more. White man 
welcome!” grinned the old fellow, gratefully. 

54 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


They bade them all good-by and set out 
by compass for the neighborhood of camp. 
How to find it was something of a poser, but 
after a morning’s march the lay of the hills 
began to seem familiar once more and Sadok 
led them in to the very jungle of tall trees 
where they had first seen the great birds of 
paradise. 

Dwight was in camp, and overjoyed at 
Nicky’s present of the Papilio ulysses , which 
was so rare a treasure that he at once set 
about pouring a plaster-of-Paris mold for 
it and getting it under glass without delay. 

“I wish I had a trade-last for you, old 
scout,” said Dwight as he mounted the spec- 
imen, “but I haven’t. The curator and I 
have been mineralogizing since you were gone. 
We found out a lot about the interior of New 
Guinea — ” 

“New Guinea!” echoed Nicky, amazedly. 

“Yes, New Guinea,” retorted Dwight, 
and he told Nicky of the source of the chan- 
nels that divide Aru. 

“And didn’t you get a single sea snake, 
down there?” asked Nicky, regretfully. “The 
shallow sea’s full of ’em, all highly venomous, 
you know — ” 

“I didn’t!” shivered Dwight, recalling the 
55 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


hours they had spent unprotected on the 
raft. “That’s more in your line. Real sea 
serpents, eh?” 

“Yep. I still believe in the sea serpent,” 
laughed Nicky. “There are plenty of small 
ones among the New Guinea coasts and up 
the lagoons. They have a broad, finny tail 
like an eel, but are true serpents. They 
swim up near the surface and live on fish, 
but have poison fangs just like many of the 
land snakes. That’s why I am still convinced 
that there may be a larger species, sometimes 
seen far at sea by ships. They have been too 
often reported to be a myth. But these islands 
are too dry and rocky for anything but lizards. 
Where’s the curator gone?” 

“He went after a black cockatoo which 
came through the grove awhile ago. I heard 
his gun recently.” 

A little later the curator returned, carrying 
a specimen of the great black cockatoo, a 
rare find, but it was nothing to his delight 
over the magnificent bird of paradise that 
Nicky sprang on him unawares. 

“Man dear, where did you get that!" he 
yelled, examining it avidly. “That’s the 
big prize of the expedition, so far. I guess 
we can go on to New Guinea, now!” 

56 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

On the next day camp was broken and the 
party steered out of the jungle by compass 
and hunter’s paths, arriving back at the 
bungalow by nightfall. The following two 
days were mighty busy, for Nicky, as “snake- 
ologist” of the expedition, had a large assort- 
ment of reptile skins to prepare, and the 
curator, as ornithologist, likewise; and all 
of them had to be packed in ant-proof tin 
receptacles before leaving. Dwight, as ento- 
mologist, mounted his specimens in flat, 
glass-covered wooden boxes, which could be 
packed a dozen at a time in tin cases. 

That evening the curator hunted up the 
captain and crew of the proa and they warped 
her out into the harbor, for they were to 
sail for New Guinea the next morning. They 
all slept aboard once more, and at dawn 
stood out of the coral reefs and headed around 
Kobror for the hundred-mile run across to 
the coast of Dutch New Guinea. Two morn- 
ings after, the lofty chain of the Charles 
Louis Mountains, as the northern end of the 
Snow Mountains has been named, jutted out 
of the sea under banks of clouds. Navigators 
have measured the height of these mountains 
at six to nine thousand feet, taking observa- 
tions from the decks of passing vessels, while 
57 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


the higher peaks of the Snow Mountains to 
the south rise to sixteen thousand feet. The 
mouths of a few rivers in that country have 
been noted on the map; but the hinterland 
remains a mystery to the world. Even the 
South and North Poles are better known. 

By afternoon, the mainland had become 
quite visible, jungly foothills rising ridge on 
ridge to the base of the Great Precipice, 
which stretches south for two hundred miles, 
the greatest precipice in the world. Above 
it towered the snowy peaks far back in the 
mainland. They came to realize how utterly 
unknown and impenetrable it all is, when 
they awoke next morning to find the proa 
at anchor in a deep bay, with the jungly 
mountains all around them and a lagoon 
thirty miles long stretching back into the 
hinterland. Mangrove swamps lined the 
shore in an unbroken line. Here and there 
a dent in them told of the mouth of a stream. 
No living human was in sight, but the smoke 
of signal fires rose from points along shore, 
and scouting parties of native savages could 
be made out through the glasses already 
watching them, swinging through the trees 
over the mangroves like troops of monkeys. 
Now and then a long black canoe, with high 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


carved prow, would cross the upper lagoon, 
driven by lines of paddling blacks. The 
very haste of them spelled danger, the pass- 
ing of the word through the villages that a 
strange proa was here. A short raid on shore, 
a few miles into the jungle at most, unless 
attempted by a whole regiment of soldiers, 
would be certain to end in ambush and mur- 
der. As for those dense jungles and tower- 
ing mountains back a day's march into the 
interior — U nexplored ! Danger ! Pygmies ! 
Head hunters! was written all over them! 

They were examining the shore curiously, 
with a sense of the utter hopelessness of the 
undertaking oppressing them, when a huge 
black lakatoi, or native catamaran, jutted 
its prow around the point of a cape to sea- 
ward. Everyone turned to watch it, and 
with chatterings and gesticulations the crew 
sprang to life. 

“ Lakatoi, Orang-kaya /” sang out Sadok, 
pointing to seaward. She towered like a 
castle out of the sea. A single mast rose out 
of her amidships, carrying one long triangular 
mat sail with deeply incurved ends. Around 
the mast was a wooden platform, a sort of 
fighting deck with rails around it, and it was 
held down on the two log canoes which floated 
59 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


the structure by long bamboo arches like 
the backs of a bridge. The lakatoi was 
crowded with warriors whose spears and 
bows and clubs could be made out jutting 
up through the serried ranks like tiny black 
jackstraws. 

a Bajak! Bajak /” (“Pirates! Pirates!”) rose 
the excited yell forward, and there was a mad 
scramble of the crew to the waist for weapons. 

“Every lakatoi full of natives is a ‘pirate’ 
to these beggars,” laughed the curator. 
“They’ll probably prove hostile, though. 
Look to your guns, boys.” 

“Are you going to use the queer pistol, 
sir?” asked Dwight, curiously, slipping a clip 
of cartridges into the butt of his automatic. 

“Nope. Won’t need to this time,” smiled 
the curator. “Got to save it for something 
worse!” He strolled to the deck house and 
went inside. 

Dwight and Nicky watched the lakatoi 
bowling down toward them. The natives 
on her were brandishing their bows and 
spears and did not seem in the least friendly. 
Their own crew now lined the rails of the 
proa, armed with a motley collection of Sin- 
gapore muskets, old repeating rifles of the 
Spencer vintage, and bows and arrows. They 
60 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


yelled defiance at the approaching catamaran 
and were evidently eager for a fight. 

She came steadily on, while everyone 
crouched behind the gunwales, peering at 
her. At about fifty yards a cloud of arrows 
sailed from her and came swishing and sing- 
ing aboard, striking the deck house and 
sticking in the soft planks. Dwight picked 
up one of them, while the thunder of black- 
powder guns roared out from their own ship. 
The arrow was of cane, without nock or 
feathers, a yard long, and had a point of 
ebony notched with barbs for a foot back. 

“Outanatas!” he exclaimed. “They mean 
business. Give it to ’em, Nick!” They fired 
their pistols, hoping to add to the number 
who had already dropped struggling on the 
fighting platform. Sadok’s long sumpitan 
stuck out over the gunwale, and at every 
cough from its muzzle a yelling, arrow- 
shooting native would grow livid and fall 
helplessly among his comrades. Her deck 
was a shambles, but there were plenty of 
them left and she came steadily on. 

A crash shivered the proa from stem to 
stern as the lakatoi’s high prows rode up 
over their gunwale, and twenty blacks leaped 
aboard, stabbing with their spears over shields 
61 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 

that were hideous with the carved scrolls of 
diabolical faces on them. Parangs flashed 
out among the crew and a fierce hand-to- 
hand struggle on deck ensued. The crew 
charged at the invaders, led by Sadok, whose 
whirling parang-ihlang swung around his 
head in red flashes that cleft to the bone 
where they struck. The boys held off, firing 
deliberately where a particularly fierce native 
seemed to be carrying all before him. On 
and on came the boarders in a living black 
stream, while the air sang with arrows from 
those still on the lakatoi. They were out- 
numbered, three to one. Slowly the crew 
gave back in the furious melee, the struggling 
mass of brown and black men stabbing and 
cutting in a writhing heap in the waist. 
Behind them two tall natives fought toward 
the masts, armed with blazing torches to set 
the sail afire. With a fierce burst of pistol 
shots the boys picked them off. 

Then the brown flash of the curator’s long 
frame leaped out of the deck house. An 
arrow pierced his helmet as his arm swept 
over his head in the cricketer’s swing. A 
brown object like a baseball shot over to the 
lakatoi, followed by another and another as the 
arm went on swinging with incredible swiftness. 

62 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


Brr-aaam! Brr-aam! Brr-aam! The deto- 
nation was frightful, riving the lakatoi apart 
in great splinters of logs and planks as the 
grenades exploded. Men, sails, and spars 
were torn apart in livid flashes of blinding 
light. The concussion knocked down the 
combatants on their own ship, while a giant, 
foamy wave leaped out of the sea and engulfed 
them, the water falling on the fighting men 
in the waist like a deluge. Terror-stricken, 
the boarders gave back, falling like flies 
before the busy parangs, the survivors leap- 
ing headlong into the sea. Of the lakatoi 
there was nothing left but a mass of floating 
fragments. In a moment more it was all over 
and the crew stood breathing heavily, looking 
at the curator with broad grins of delight. 

“ Welcome to New Guinea!” laughed the 
curator, grimly, standing with a fourth hand 
grenade in his grip, its firing mechanism still 
unarmed. “I guess that will be about all, 
Captain,” he said to the jurugan , who stood 
nursing a cut shoulder. “Stop those fel- 
lows!” he ordered, for the guns were begin- 
ning to bark again at the survivors of the 
lakatoi swimming in the water. “Let 'em 
get ashore and tell all about it. Ought to 
give us quite a rep ! How did you make out, 
63 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


boys?” he asked, turning to them coolly. 
“This was nothing compared with some of 
our trench parties.” 

“Nice souvenir you’ve got, sir!” grinned 
Nicky, pointing to the long arrow still stick- 
ing in the curator’s helmet. “Dwight and 
I got off easy. They didn’t seem to pay 
much attention to us. Never saw a firearm 
before, I suppose. A lot of the crew seem 
dead or wounded, though, and I saw Baderoon 
go down.” 

“Get hold of Sadok, when you can,” or- 
dered the curator. “I see he’s busy in the 
waist. And have them bring Baderoon into 
the deck house.” 

Some of the crew were now cleaning up 
the waist and others were hoisting the anchor 
by its primitive wooden windlass so as to 
sail the proa farther up the lagoon. Sadok 
came up, breathing happily through his wide 
Malay nostrils. 

“Me have’m lov’y fight, Orang-kaya!" he 
beamed. “Catch’m three head!” He grinned, 
holding up the gory trophies for them to 
admire. “But you, Orang-kaya /” His eyes 
looked adoringly at the curator. “White 
man debbil-debbil verree strong! Him fight 
like hell!” 


64 


IV 


NICK ENCOUNTERS A DEATH ADDER 

B ADEROON was carried into the deck 
house, his long, muscular Papuan frame 
livid and limp. His rattan shield and bow 
were borne by Sadok, but, from his wrist still 
dangled a long war club captured by him 
during the fight. It was of stout ironwood, 
with a head made of a thick disk of a stone 
like jade. The club was ornamented with 
rows of boars' tusks dangling from its handle, 
alternating with tufts of human hair, and a 
stout strap held it to the wrist at its handle. 
Dwight remembered having a glimpse of 
Baderoon crashing valiantly through the 
pirate swarm with it, after his arrows were 
all shot away. 

The curator put some brandy to Baderoon's 
lips and the “boy” revived. The first thing 
he felt for was the tin mirror in his nose. 
Finding this still there, he sank back with 
a sigh of relief. 

“There! That's fine!” encouraged the 
65 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


curator, holding up the Papuan’s woolly 
head. “You-fellah come good-fellah soon, 
Baderoon! He’s got quite a rap on the roof 
and he’s lost a lot of blood from that arrow 
wound where it got torn out during the 
scrimmage. Get me my first-aid, quick. He 
feels a lot better, now that he knows his 
charm is all right!” he chuckled. 

Baderoon opened his eyes and an irre- 
sistible grin cracked his thick lips. 

“No kai-kai [eat] me-fellah! Orang-kaya 
him go Boom! — Boom ! — All stop!” he grinned 
weakly, snapping all his fingers to imitate 
the explosion. 

“All right, boy,” beamed the curator. 
“You-fellah stop, quiet! Will plenty debbil- 
debbil your arm,” he warned, producing the 
antiseptics. He shot the iodine into the 
open wound, while Baderoon set his teeth 
obediently, enduring the pain as best he could. 
Then his master wrapped on the gauze and 
bandages and hung the arm in a sling, and 
they all went out, leaving the native resting 
easily on a bench, afraid to touch his bandages 
under fear of the orang-kaya' s displeasure. 

The proa was bowling along up the lagoon, 
sailing farther and farther in behind the 
Charles Louis Mountains as they looked 
66 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


about them. A large river flowed in up at 
the head of the lagoon, they knew, but the 
curator had decided to take the first creek 
mouth that looked uninhabited on the moun- 
tain shore. Not a sign of a village or even 
a canoe had they seen, so dense are the man- 
grove swamps. Finally a dent in them, at 
the end of a long valley between two of the 
mountains, came in sight. A careful search 
of the trees around it with the glasses revealed 
no more native scouts. The curator judged 
that they had gotten up to sparsely inhabited 
country, and the proa was nosed into a little 
bay with the swift, clear water of the creek 
running into it. With slack sheet she laid 
her prow into the mouth of it, the shores 
slipping by close at hand. 

He gave the order to go ashore, and, 
shouldering their packs, Nicky and Dwight 
leaped into the jungle, followed by Sadok 
with a huge crate of empty collection boxes 
on his back. Baderoon jumped next, able 
to walk now, and carrying nothing but his 
bow and shield, a borrowed quiver of arrows, 
and his captured war club. Then the curator 
turned to the jurugan. 

“Come back here in three weeks, Captain,” 
he said. “Well be here waiting for you — - 
6 67 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


or dead. Good-by, all! Nice fight, wasn’t 
it!” A flash of grins swept the crew’s faces 
as he seized his light double shotgun and 
jumped for the bank. The proa backed off 
and soon her sails filled and she stood down 
the lagoon, bound for Aru. 

“Well, boys, we’re on our own!” said the 
curator, cheerfully, joining the rest of the 
party. “I reckon we can stay alive for three 
weeks in this country! And we ought to have 
something to tell about when we get back 
here. Paradisea superba , the superb bird of 
paradise, is what we particularly want; also 
an accurate report on the mineralogy of this 
region.” 

They picked their way up over clinking 
bits of old broken coral, aiming for the high 
ground above the source of the stream. 
Skirting along this for some distance, they 
soon found that it was a small, flat table- 
land of some ancient coral growth, back of 
which was the real jungle. The sparse soil 
was grown with stunted seaside palms and 
various species of ironwood and lignum vitae. 
Through it the stream cut on its way from 
the interior. The curator had about decided 
to establish camp here until the region could 
be investigated before going farther, when 
68 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

a cry from Nicky aroused them. It came 
from farther upstream. 

“This way, fellows !” it called; “here’s 
something interesting!” 

They followed the call, to pitch down the 
coral bank to a small beach by the stream- 
side, clear of mangroves. An abandoned 
outrigger sail canoe lay hauled up on the 
shore. The coral flat had protected it from 
the moist jungle rot, but its weatherbeaten 
planks showed that it had been there for 
several years. 

“A crocodile slipped into the water as I 
came down here, and found — this,” announced 
Nicky. “It looks like a Ceram or Salwatty 
boat to me. See the single mast and the 
two bamboo outriggers.” 

She was about twenty-five feet long, with 
a bamboo platform overhanging the body of 
the canoe on each side astern, its outer edges 
guarded with stout bamboo rails. The body 
was of flat, hewn planks, built up on a wide 
keel hollowed from a single log. The New 
Guinea boats were all made of one or more 
log canoes, hollowed out of a single log, they 
knew; this canoe came from Ke’ or Ceram, 
but of its history there was not a trace. The 
sail, of woven cotton, still lay wrapped around 
69 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


its yards. Two lengths of bamboo, about 
twenty feet long and six inches thick, formed 
the floating outriggers, which were lashed to 
bow-shaped hardwood spars notched across 
the gunwales. All her rattan lashings were 
in as good shape as the day she was made. 

An involuntary shiver of apprehension 
went over the party. Others had come — • 
and never returned! 

“Some poor devils ventured in here after 
paradise birds and got eaten, I presume,” 
said the curator. “It's a cinch they never 
got back! We’ll adopt her. We may need 
her some day! Here’s good water and dry 
ground, fellows! Let’s camp here and col- 
lect within easy distance until we know the 
lay of the land. And we’ll all keep together 
for the present, boys,” he ordered, meaningly. 

The parangs got busy, and soon a space 
was cleared in the underbrush where the 
two tent flys of the boys and the curator’s 
hammock could be swung. Sadok disap- 
peared into the jungle, whence the sound of 
his chopper soon came, and presently he 
returned to camp, bearing a long green pole 
of bamboo across his shoulders. This he 
notched with footsteps cut above each joint, 
and the pole was then laid upright in the 
70 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

fork of a small ironwood tree. Up it the 
curator climbed, to look out over the country. 

“That was some look-see, boys!” he an- 
nounced, coming down from the pole. “The 
mountains lie right near us, to the right, 
with a strip of deep jungle, about half a mile 
wide, beginning just beyond this table of 
coral land. We’ll have to go through it with 
compass and parang. This stream comes 
down from a notch in the mountains, with 
some high grass plateaus shelving out from 
their sides. It’s a great country, and I 
doubt if anyone finds us for a time yet. I 
did not see a sign of a hut or a village. It’s 
safe to collect anywhere on this coral ground, 
I think. And there are thunderheads com- 
ing over the mountains to the west right 
now, so make your tents secure for the night 
and cook whatever you’re going to before 
the rain comes.” 

Nicky did not care to eat just then, so he 
set out on an exploring trip. For some 
distance he poked along, slowly, above the 
course of the stream, starting at every rustle 
of big land crabs scuttling for their holes in 
the underbrush. The growth of tangled iron- 
woods was so thick that he had to hack with 
his parang to get even through the thinnest 
7i 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


vistas. He moved slowly along, the thrill 
of being alone in an unknown land peopled 
with savage cannibals putting his nerves on 
edge. He recalled stories of how the Outa- 
natas did not eat a man whole, like the South 
Sea Islanders, but had a playful way of 
cutting off a leg and binding up the stump, 
saving the man for further feasts while they 
ate the leg before his eyes; and how, last 
year, six Javanese had been suddenly decap- 
itated by the Tugeri, just inside the barbed 
wire of the Dutch fort at Merauke, and 
how — 

Brrrrumm ! — right behind him! It might 
have been the grunt of a wild boar: it might 
have been — anything! Nicky jumped, whirl- 
ing in the air, electrified with fear, and landed 
on his feet with gun cocked and staring eyes. 
Nothing whatever was visible. The dense 
brush was as silent and inscrutable as the 
Sphinx. Trying to quiet his pounding heart, 
the boy began to turn cautiously around, 
when — Brrrruuumm! right behind him again! 
He whirled about, angry this time, looking 
with all his eyes for something to shoot at. 

Brruum! — Brrumm! The sound seemed to 
come from overhead, and, looking up, Nicky 
saw a large air plant, its blatant flowers in 
72 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

showy profusion — and hovering in front of 
them was a large tropical humming bird! 

The revulsion was too great! The boy 
threw back his head and yelled with hysterical 
laughter. 

“ Frightened to death by a humming bird!” 
he whooped. “ Yow-yowri! Well, it's time 
I shoved along and accomplished something!” 

He pushed his way through the thickets, 
defiantly now, hoping that something would 
turn up worth shooting at. Presently he 
came to a little open glade grown up with 
saw grass, with a small pond in the center of 
it. As he burst through the thicket two 
animals rose up out of the grass across the 
pond and went jumping off, sailing over the 
yellow field in long leaps that carried them 
twenty feet to the bound. Nicky did not 
have to be told that they were wallabys, the 
New Guinea species of kangaroo. He whipped 
out his long-barreled Officer's Model and 
poised its fine sights on the rearmost wallaby. 
He had learned through long practice that 
his revolver was as good as a rifle at any 
range up to seventy-five yards, if well handled, 
and he depended on it for all big game. As 
the gun barked, the wallaby pitched down, 
rolling over and over like a rabbit in the saw 
73 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 

grass, its long hind legs kicking convulsively. 
The other wallaby soared in a frantic series 
of hops, and reached the jungle before the 
wavering sights of the revolver could be 
steadied on it. 

Nicky started to dash through the grass 
around the pond after his prize, but the sud- 
den soar of a small animal like a flying squirrel, 
but much larger, brought him to a full stop. 
It had left the topmost branches of a tall 
thorn tree on the edge of the jungle and had 
volplaned downward in a long flight across 
the opening. Nicky’s ready shotgun sprang 
to shoulder and he covered it in full flight 
and pulled trigger. The creature fell into 
the grass as he blew the smoke from his 
barrel and slipped in another shell. A single 
step forward developed more life, for a large 
green grasshopper like a katydid sprang 
from its depths, made a short flight, and lit 
near by. It had a peculiar shield like a leaf 
curved backward over its head. Nicky 
whipped off his helmet to capture it, for he 
recognized the great shielded grasshopper of 
New Guinea and he knew that Dwight would 
want it. 

He crept forward stealthily, when his eye 
was attracted by the bright flash of orange 
74 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

and black where a medium-sized bird was 
hopping from branch to branch in the thicket 
to his right. One glance at the quantity of 
long feathers of an intense orange hue that 
adorned its neck told him that it was the 
rare paradise oriole, closely allied to the true 
paradise birds and a specimen of the utmost 
value to the curator. 

Nicky raised his gun, embarrassed at all 
these sudden riches of natural history that 
surrounded him. It occurred to him that 
this little pond bore all the aspects of the 
African water hole, in that it attracted wild 
life as a sort of center, and that he could 
spend a long time right here without begin- 
ning to exhaust its possibilities. As the gun 
barked the bird fell tumbling through the 
thicket and the boy reloaded, wondering 
what new marvel would develop at his very 
next step. Then the grasshopper claimed 
his attention. It had made another short 
flight. This time the helmet scooped him 
in. He paused a moment to wonder over 
the remarkable camouflage that nature had 
provided for this insect, for the shield resem- 
bled a green leaf so closely that a passing 
hornet or bird, which were its chief enemies, 
would be completely deceived. 

75 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


In lieu of a better place to put it, Nicky 
pinned it on his helmet and then resolutely 
trailed through the grass to find the small 
flying creature that he had shot, unmind- 
ful of the quantities of insects that he had 
stirred up, the very number and diversity 
of which would have driven Dwight into a 
frenzy. 

“Must tell the old scout about this 
muttered the boy. “He’d camp here a 
week! Ought to be something in my line, 
too, around this water. Heigho! What in 
the dickens is this?” he exclaimed, picking 
up the animal. It looked like an opossum, 
but it had broad furry membranes extending 
from fore to hind leg exactly like our own 
flying squirrel. 

“Flying opossum, by ginger!” cried the 
boy, for he had of course read up on all the 
natural history of New Guinea that is known. 
He examined the curious creature with all 
the sensations of the true naturalist. It is 
a far different thing to read of these examples 
of nature’s marvelous diversity, than to 
actually handle and examine the creatures 
themselves. Like all but two of New Guinea’s 
mammals, this was a marsupial, a reminder 
of that far time when all of Papua, Australia, 
76 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

and the adjacent islands connected by the 
shallow sea was one vast continent, entirely 
separated from Asia by deep sea. Why did 
this continent evolve marsupials in every 
form of animal life, even the bear and the 
wolf? Here was the counterpart of our flying 
squirrel, with the same protective capacity 
to fly, but a marsupial and by structure most 
closely allied to the opossums. It was surely 
a brave conundrum! 

He retrieved the paradise oriole and started 
out to the pond again, but a sharp hiss in the 
grass stopped him like an electric shock. A 
black and mottled snake rose threateningly, 
with steely tongue quivering from its mouth. 
Nicky recoiled, shielding his eyes with his 
arm, for he had recognized with a shock of 
loathing fear the dreaded death adder of 
Papua, which can spit poison with consid- 
erable accuracy for more than six feet. He 
backed off rapidly, watching the snake nar- 
rowly, for he knew that it would attack with 
great swiftness, blinding his eyes before 
striking. Then his shotgun sprang to shoulder 
as the snake moved toward him through the 
grass, and he pulled trigger as its horned 
head appeared for an instant over the tubes. 
Out of the mist of smoke and the confusion 
77 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


of the recoil Nicky had time to realize but 
one thing — that head was still weaving toward 
him with the speed of an express train! It 
would not do to aim the gun again and so 
expose his eyes. He turned to fly, dropping 
his gun and tugging frantically at his parang. 
As it flashed from its wooden sheath he made 
a swift backhand slash with it, urged by the 
imminent horror of the snake being close 
behind him. He felt the parang’s blade cut 
bone, and at the same instant something 
soft and wet struck the back of his neck 
and a hot, irritating pain seared his flesh. 
Putting up his hand as he ran, he found his 
fingers covered with a pale yellow fluid that 
burnt where it touched. Nicky stopped at 
the thicket and faced about. A violent 
thrashing of coils in the grass behind him, 
now flashing up the white belly, now the 
mottled back, told him that he had beheaded 
the adder. He went back cautiously, for 
he appreciated now that the borders of that 
pond would be alive with snakes. He got 
to water finally, and began washing stren- 
uously. The pain still kept up, however, 
and he could feel a large blister raising on 
the skin of his neck. 

“I must get back to camp quickly, where 
78 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


the curator can paint me with iodine!” he 
muttered to himself. “What would happen 
if I should faint here in the jungle!” 

He found the head of the death adder and 
wrapped it in his handkerchief and tied it 
to his belt. The body was about eight feet 
long. Dragging it over to the thicket, he 
hung it on a bush and then skirted around, 
keeping a sharp watch at his feet, and finally 
came out to the body of the wallaby. 

It was very like the great gray kangaroo 
of Australia, but much smaller and reddish 
in color. He swung it over his shoulder and 
retraced his steps to the thicket. Tying the 
long body of the adder to his belt, he pushed 
for camp. He felt dizzy and weak, and sick 
at the stomach, and his neck burnt like a 
fire. Staggering on, he sought the thinnest 
openings in the brush and so unconsciously 
retraced his steps; but the briers tore at him 
and his burden with maddening tenacity and 
he steadily grew weaker and weaker. At 
last the welcome sound of voices and chopping 
came to his ears, and with a last burst of 
endurance he drove through the thickets 
and fell forward limply, just over the edge of 
their clearing. 

The curator dropped his microscope and 
79 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


notebook and ran over, followed by Dwight, 
who had heard his startled exclamation. 

“Man, animal, or reptile?” giggled Dwight, 
looking down at the odd huddle of wallaby, 
snake, and boy that was Nicky. 

“Cut it, and call Sadok and Baderoon! 
Quick!” snapped the curator, sharply. “Some- 
thing has happened to him. Nothing is ever 
trivial in this jungle, Dwight!” He pulled 
off the wallaby as he spoke, and his eyes fell 
at once on the red scar on the back of Nicky’s 
neck. He examined it carefully, but no sign 
of fangs was visible. 

“Go get the medicine kit!” he barked, as 
Dwight left on the run. Baderoon came up, 
and his eyes opened as they lit on the body of 
the snake. 

“ Koikoim meten /” he gasped, horror- 
stricken. “Me go find’m taboo for him — • 
quick! Boy him die!” He dashed off into 
the jungle. Sadok bent over, shaking his 
head. The snake was unfamiliar to him and 
he could do nothing. Dwight returned with 
the medicine kit and the curator painted the 
spot with iodine, but it seemed to have no 
effect. Nicky was in a kind of swoon, from 
which all efforts, even brandy, failed to arouse 
him. Faces lengthened as the minutes went 
80 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


by with no improvement. Finally Baderoon 
emerged from the jungle, carrying a spray 
of some kind of plant. 

“Me find’m taboo !” He grinned cheer- 
fully. He crushed the weed in his hands and 
rubbed the juice on the spot, kneading it in 
and crooning a wild Papuan chant the while. 
After some five minutes of it, which seemed 
like five weeks to the white men looking on, 
Nicky opened his eyes. 

“Gee ! I could — write a — fine story — about 
this!” he sighed, weakly. “I’ve been con- 
scious all the time,” he went on, more strongly 
as Baderoon kept up his vigorous kneading, 
“but for the life of me I could not move any- 
thing. Seemed to be kind of paralyzed. 
Baderoon — you’re a brick!” he cried, grasping 
the mop-haired Papuan’s horny hand. 

“ Orang-kichil [little chief] all right? Me 
make’m koikoim debbil-debbil!” he grinned, 
kneading steadily and applying more of the 
pale-green plant juice. 

Nicky told them all about it as he steadily 
grew stronger, and finally he sat up and undid 
the handkerchief holding the snake’s head. 
“It’s a fine specimen, all right, though!” he 
maintained, stoutly. “Baderoon, you fix’m 
koikoim’s — isn’t it? — koikoim’s head, and 
81 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


we’ll save the whole of him for mounting. 
Me for a sleep for a thousand years!” 

They got Nicky tucked away for the night 
and his tent fly secured down strongly like 
a wedge tent, for great plashes of raindrops 
were beginning to fall and the rolling thunder 
came nearer and nearer down the mountains. 
Then came the roar of the rain, and bright, 
vivid flashes of lightning rent the twilight. 

Sadok and Baderoon moved their mats 
under the curator’s hammock fly, while rain 
drove in sheets through the tropical night. 
It was furious while it lasted, but by eight 
o’clock the storm had died to distant mutter- 
ings far back in the interior, and a pitch 
blackness ensued. Then the stars came out, 
and in the moist, steaming stillness the camp 
went off to sleep for their first night in the 
New Guinea jungle. 


V 


THE OUTANATAS 

F OR the next few days the water hole 
became a star collecting ground for the 
entire expedition. Nicky was laid up a day 
in camp, recovering from the effects of the 
death adder’s poison, but he soon came to 
haunt the pond, for it and the stream that 
flowed past their camp were his main reliance 
for abundance of reptilian life. 

“Here’s where we make the main collec- 
tion, fellows,” said the curator, as he and 
Sadok came back to their temporary head- 
quarters loaded with curious hook-billed 
Macrorhina kingfishers, magnificent crowned 
pigeons, Manucodia starlings of brilliant hues 
of plumage, blue flycatcher wrens, and many 
other species of the abundant bird life of 
New Guinea. 

“We’ll fill the main collection crates with 
a representative collection in all four divisions 
of natural history. That will leave us free 
to concentrate on the rarer varieties during 
7 83 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


the exploration trip,” he continued. ”1 vote 
we have a pig hunt to-morrow. Baderoon 
tells me he has discovered plentiful rootings 
down in that mass of high jungle that separ- 
ates us from the mountain chain. We ought 
to lay in some fresh meat and cure some bacon 
before starting into the interior.” 

“Me for the hogfest!” crowed Nicky. 
“I've about nailed every lizard, tree frog, 
and snakelet in this vicinity. What ammu- 
nition shall we use, sir?” 

“For wild boar I’m inclined to the solid 
ounce ball in a twelve-gauge shotgun,” 
grinned the curator. “It’s the only thing 
that will stop ’em at close range. Beats a 
high-power rifle all hollow, for it knocks ’em 
down to stay. I brought along some shells 
loaded with three-quarter ounce ball for our 
twenty-gauges, and we’ll serve ’em out 
to-morrow.” 

On the next day the pig hunt was started. 
The wild pig of New Guinea, Sus papuana , 
is in several respects peculiar to himself. 
Armed with those long tusks that the natives 
use for nose ornaments and breast shields, 
he is wild, long legged, and speedy as a deer. 
He has the typical Asiatic screw tail, in place 
of the long straight one of the wild boar of 
84 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

Europe, but is almost hairless and provided 
with thick horny shoulder plates under the 
skin that will turn almost any bullet. Like 
all pigs, he fights well when cornered, is very 
tenacious of life, and attacks with a slashing 
charge of his tusks, attempting to upset a 
man with his momentum and then turn and 
rend out his ribs with a powerful stroke of 
the long, sharp tushes. 

Baderoon and Sadok disappeared into the 
jungle to get above their feeding ground and 
act as beaters, while the curator and the boys 
took up vantage points a short distance back 
from the creek in the swampy bottoms. 

Dwight soon found himself alone under 
the tall foliage, with vines and creepers 
crisscrossing in front of him and dense under- 
growth, making it impossible to see thirty 
feet away, all around him. Great, slippery 
roots buttressed out from the tree trunks, 
crawling over the muddy soil like alligator 
backs. Nicky and the curator were farther 
on down the creek, both as silent as the 
grave, for it was essential to make no noise. 
Dwight realized that he had been given the 
post of honor this time, and that it would be 
he who would bear the brunt of the charge. 
In spite of himself he found himself shivering 

8s 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


with excitement, opening his gun to peer at 
the shells, setting the safety on and off, and 
otherwise betraying symptoms that looked 
very like fear. He had never hunted wild 
boar before, and he found himself wishing 
that he had a bayonet or a spear or some- 
thing to defend himself at close quarters. 
As it was, he would have to depend entirely 
on steady nerves and a well-placed bullet. 

Then, far up the jungle, he heard the dis- 
tant noises of the infernal din that Sadok 
and Baderoon were making, yelling and 
beating with their spears on their shields. 
It was followed presently by faint squeals, 
and later he could hear the grunts, it seemed, 
of a whole drove of wild boars. They were 
coming like the wind, the undergrowth crack- 
ling under their hoofs, vines tearing and 
ripping and carrying away bush growth, and 
then the jungle floor fairly shook, as if loco- 
motives were thundering down on him. 

A swishing and waving in the undergrowth 
showed him that they would pass him about 
thirty yards off, between him and the creek. 
Dwight sternly repressed an impulse to hang 
back and let them go by. To see clearly to 
shoot, he would have to run forward and 
plant himself nearly in their path. 

86 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

“ Don’t be a coward ! Into this, you boob !” 
he swore at himself, as he drove forward 
through the tangle of jungle growth. He 
ran out on a great prone trunk and peered 
into the moving bushes. They were going 
by, grunting and squealing with mixed terror 
and anger — five of them, and two great big 
fellows, with long, wicked ivory tushes curl- 
ing around their snouts. Dwight raised the 
twenty-bore, followed along back of the 
shoulder of the nearest, and fired. Instantly 
a bawl of pain and rage went up as the boar 
stopped, whirling about a broken foreleg and 
looking about him red eyed with rage. The 
rest went thundering on, and a boom from 
the curator’s gun rang through the jungle. 
Dwight’s boar spied him and came hitching 
toward him on three legs, grunting his rage. 
The boy had opened his gun to slip in another 
shell, so eager was he to have plenty of shots. 
In an electric shock of realization, he saw 
that he had not time to do anything of the 
sort. Hastily snapping it shut, he drew a 
wavering bead and fired again. The ball 
hit somewhere in the shoulder and glanced 
off, but it put the boar in a frightful rage. 
He charged the log with a red glare in his 
eyes and leaped up, his tusks sweeping the 
87 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


upper surface of it. Dwight leaped off and 
reloaded frantically in the brief breathing 
space left him. With a leap like a deer, the 
boar went over the trunk, while Dwight fired 
both barrels full into his head at six feet, and 
then turned and dashed into the jungle. A 
great 'Vine caught under his armpits as the 
boy crashed into it, and it laid him sprawling 
in the thick bush growth. He wormed 
through it desperately, and reloaded, won- 
dering all the time why he had not been gored 
and trampled to death. His heart pounded 
so that its rapid beats were audible as he 
opened his mouth to breathe. Then he re- 
alized that the boar had not followed, 
and, plucking up courage, he stole back to 
look. 

There lay the boar, threshing feebly about 
beside the log, his life slowly ebbing away. 
Dwight watched him, afraid to come nearer, 
scarce daring to hope that he had won. A 
final convulsion, and the boar seemed to go 
to sleep as he gave a last little sigh and 
stretched his great head out on the jungle. 

“Whoops! I’ve got him!” yelled Dwight, 
stepping nearer to prod at the carcass with 
his gun barrels. 

“Had a fat time with him, too, judging 
88 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

by the noise !” laughed the curator’s voice. 
“I got one, too — nice pig.” 

Dwight remembered that the curator had 
fired but one shot — coolly and carefully 
placed, no doubt, but he was not ashamed. 
He had done well, for his first try! Nicky 
had not fired at all, for the rest of the drove 
had swerved and crossed the creek in a splash 
at the two gunshots. He and the curator 
came over to look at his trophy. 

“ Ought to cut out those and wear them 
in your nose, to be really fashionable in New 
Guinea, Dwight!” laughed Nicky, pointing 
to the razor-sharp tushes. “I was just 
coming over to lend a hand to help the 
curator up a tree when he fired, and the 
rest of the family beat it across the creek. 
Out o’ luck, as usual!” he grinned, cheer- 
fully. 

After a time Sadok and Baderoon came up 
and set about butchering the two pigs. The 
bacon flitches and hams from them were 
cured over a smoke rack during the next two 
days, while the party dined on fresh liver, 
and, later, pork chops, after the game had 
hung for a day. 

On the third morning the whole party left 
camp with two days’ provisions, to make a 
89 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


first exploration of the table-lands back in 
the mountains. They steered across the 
jungle by compass, Sadok and Baderoon 
clearing the way with their parangs. Then 
the ground began to rise, and slowly they 
worked up from the wild profusion of equato- 
rial jungle into the more arid growths of the 
mountain side. The going became easier, 
as on all high ground, and the nature of the 
wild life and vegetation began to change. 
New insects and birds became numerous, 
and their progress was slow because nearly 
all of them were wanted for the collections, 
and the curator knew from long experience 
that the time to take a specimen was when 
you saw him, for you might not get another. 

By midafternoon they had reached the 
plateaus near the notch in the mountains, 
and here they encountered their brook again. 
But what a different stream from the smooth, 
deep, jungly creek flowing silently down 
below through overhanging arches of vines 
and creepers! Here its bed was wide and 
pebbly as any northern stream, the creek 
following the deepest parts, with dry bars 
of pebbles scoured clean by former freshets. 
Wild trees of the coffee and Euphorbia fam- 
ilies, thorns, and acacias dotted the stream 
90 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


banks. It was hot up here, but dry, and a 
pleasant place to live in. The curator was 
examining the pebbles eagerly, to get some 
idea of the rock formations of the mountains, 
when Sadok whistled softly and pointed 
upstream. A party of tall black natives 
was threading through the forest, and their 
leaders were already splashing across the 
stream bed! They stopped instantly as they 
spied the khaki helmets of the explorers, 
and more warriors joined them. It was a 
war party, as they could tell by the white- 
streaked faces, the weapons they carried, 
and the white breastplates of boars’ tusks 
that they had seen in museums before. 

“Outanatas,” said the curator, quietly, as 
their party drew together for support. “ We’ll 
stand right here and watch what they do.” 

The tall, slender, mop-haired savages 
splashed through the creek, about twenty- 
five of them in the party, and they were 
armed with spears, bows, and clubs. Each 
man had a shield on his left arm, made of 
some tough wood, carved in red and white 
scrolls. They shouted and yelled at the 
curator’s party as they bunched together on 
the strand of the creek, and then came run- 
ning swiftly down the pebbly drift, their 
91 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


long skinny legs shining with white amulets 
of sea shells. 

“Holler, * Friends !’ at them, Baderoon- 
boy,” said the curator as they came nearer, 
hesitating and staring at the white men. 

“ Muana komia /” cried Baderoon, dropping 
his bow and shield in sign of amity. 

The natives yelled. Whether it was friendly 
or derisive they could not tell. Then they 
formed in an irregular line and began a war 
dance toward the party. 

“They’re showing off, I think,” declared 
the curator. “If they meant war, every 
man jack of them would have melted into the 
jungle and be shooting at us by now. Still, 
we’d better be on our guard.” 

He dug into a flap pocket of his belt and 
took out a trench grenade, while the boys 
loosened their revolver flaps cautiously, their 
shotguns hanging loosely in their arms. Sadok 
reached for his parang, but the curator 
stopped him. 

“Not yet, Sadok; we can’t make the first 
hostile move. I’ll give an order if I think 
they’re getting dangerous.” 

The natives came on, yelling and dancing. 
Most of them wore long white boars’ tusks 
through the nose and curving up around 

92 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


their cheeks, giving them a singularly fierce 
aspect. Some had white shell combs dan- 
gling low over their foreheads, and nearly all 
wore a collection of white shell rings hanging 
in their ears. They brandished their spears 
and clubs as they advanced and retreated, 
going through the pantomime of mimic war- 
fare. They made diabolical faces and thrust 
out red tongues at the explorers as they came 
closer, but whether it was war or peace even 
Baderoon could not tell them. 

The boys watched the war dance, striving 
to quiet the shivers of apprehension that 
would persist in rising. It was harder to 
bear there than any amount of fighting, and 
they had much preferred standing off any 
number of natives well hidden in the bush. 

At about fifteen yards off, the line of 
natives had worked themselves into furious 
action, stabbing with their spears at the air, 
the rows of hideous shields dancing like evil 
genii from some other world. As more of 
them spread out on each flank, a guttural 
shout came from one of the tallest. 

“Shoot, Orang!" shrieked Baderoon, but 
he was too late! From behind each native’s 
shield swung a black arm holding a short 
stick of bamboo. They swept forward like 
93 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


flails, and instantly the air was filled with 
blinding fine sand and ash dust. It closed 
their eyes with the acrid, cutting particles, 
and involuntarily their arms went up to 
shield their faces, while guns went off aim- 
lessly. Sadok flashed out his parang in the 
cloud, and the curator jumped back to throw 
his bomb, but there was no room to use it. 
The natives closed in on them in a whirlwind 
of grabbing, skinny arms. Dwight saw stars 
as a club descended on his helmet, and every- 
thing went white before him. He was dimly 
conscious of a last impression of Sadok 
standing off three of them with his parang, 
and the curator buffeting his way through 
the shields toward him with bare fists, when 
his senses left him. . . . 

When he came to he was lying on the 
ground with his arms tightly bound behind 
him. Nicky and the curator were sitting up, 
also tied, and beyond them was Sadok, his 
head covered with blood where they had 
clubbed him. An occasional suppressed groan 
came from Baderoon; only themselves could 
understand the agony he was enduring, with 
his wounded arm ruthlessly trussed up like 
their own. 

The Outanatas were chattering and arguing 
94 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


around them. Finally a long rope was 
brought and the captives tied together, a 
loop of it in a single knot around each of 
their necks, so that any attempt to escape 
would bring it tight. Then they were all 
dragged to their feet and formed in a line, 
with a double file of natives on each side, and 
the party set off through the jungle. 

The way led back through the same trail 
the natives had come up on, the jungle path 
working gradually down toward the lagoon. 
The boys did little talking, for it seemed to 
make their captors angry, but they had 
plenty of time to think as they marched 
along. Dwight noted that the curator still 
carried his queer pistol, and their own were 
in the holsters yet, for the natives had dropped 
the flaps in disgust at the first sight of steel. 
Their shotguns were being carried by a 
couple of natives, each holding it with a 
wad of moss in his hand to protect it from 
the touch of steel, against which they had a 
taboo. Sadok’s sumpitan, with its spear 
blade lashed to its muzzle like a spear, they 
could understand, and his parang and Nicky’s 
were in the hands of their captors. They 
evidently respected these as real weapons 
of war, as they also did Baderoon’s bows and 
95 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


arrows and both the shields, for these were 
being carried along as trophies. 

By nightfall the trail pitched suddenly 
downward toward the lagoon, and the war- 
riors raised their voices in an exulting chant. 
It was answered by the deep boom of war 
drums, and presently they came down to a 
native village on the shore of the lagoon. 
The mangroves had been cleared away here, 
and on the beach were some twenty long 
black canoes, hauled up, their high carved 
prows looming darkly against the glassy 
surface of the waters, greenish orange in the 
dying hues of twilight. 

The huts of the village were of bamboo, 
arched up from ground to ground over a 
stout ridge pole, and thatched with palm 
attap. An excited crowd of native men 
gathered around their party, while the war- 
riors went on singing and dancing, telling 
in vigorous pantomime the story of their 
capture. There seemed to be no central 
chief, but some of the older and more power- 
ful warriors at length came to some sort of 
agreement, and they were all thrust into an 
empty hut, the men who had captured their 
weapons claiming the duty of being guards. 

The explorers sat watchful on the clean 
96 



: H<*s 


THE WAY LED BACK THROUGH THE SAME TRAIL THE NATIVES HAD 
COME UP ON, THE JUNGLE PATH WORKING GRADUALLY DOWNWARD 

TO THE LAGOON 


















J 










































i 



























. 










... 

■ 






' 
















IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


sand floor of the hut, with their guards stand- 
ing in the doorway. A great fire was started 
out in front, and they could see even the 
women and children, now, venturing from 
the huts. Log after log was piled on the 
fire, and then pairs of natives passed the door, 
carrying between them huge, rounded stones. 
One after another these were laid on the fire, 
and gradually they became red hot under- 
neath, while the upper surfaces were smooth 
and sooty in the licking flames. 

“Prenty bad! ,, whispered Baderoon in the 
curator's ear. “Fire dance! Make you- 
fellah hopp’m on rock till he cook you’ foots. 
Den dey kai-kai dat foots. Leg, he stop, 
’til next time. All kai-kai some day.” 

It was time to act! The curator shifted 
his trick ring with his thumb and opened the 
catch when it came inside his palm. His 
fingers closed around his right wrist and 
sought the binding of twisted pandanus leaf. 
A steady scratch-scratching of the little blade 
in the ring on the leaf fiber went on, while 
their guards looked out the door, watching 
the preparations. 


VI 


THE CURATOR’S AIR PISTOL 

HE flickering red lights from the dying 



i flames of the fire lit up the walls of the 
hut as the curator sat, free, with his hands 
still behind him, considering what to do next. 
The fiery glow of embers under the hot stones 
urged him to speedy action, for already the 
tom-toms of trumpet-shaped Papuan war 
drums and the whang of stringed instru- 
ments had struck up. The natives were 
yelling for the first prisoner to be brought 
out. He did not propose that their party 
should go on stumps for the rest of their lives. 

He reached carefully for the hunting knife 
in his belt, and, leaning up against Baderoon, 
his arm slipped behind him and cut his 
thongs. Then the knife was passed on, and 
Baderoon freed Sadok. The three silently 
arose and crept toward the guards leaning 
out the door. Fingers moved stealthily for 
their necks, while the boys watched them 
tensely. With a sudden pounce, both guards 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

were seized and dragged within the hut 
without a sound. Sadok was strong as a 
gorilla, and his man soon ceased to struggle. 
The curator and Baderoon had more trouble 
with theirs, for the black had only one good 
arm, but the guard was finally subdued, 
gagged, and tied after a silent tussle in which 
all three joined. Then the boys were freed, 
and Sadok jumped for his sumpitan, parang, 
and kriss, which leaned up against the walls 
of the hut. 

“This way — quick now!” hissed the cura- 
tor, pointing to the blank rear wall of the hut. 
Sadok ripped a door in it with his kriss, while 
the curator drew his pistol, inserted a small 
metal cylinder in its breech, and shoved 
down hard with the muzzle of the weapon 
on an abandoned shield of the guards. A 
crinkly noise like a spring came from within 
it, and he smiled grimly and replaced the 
pistol in its holster. Then they all crept out 
through the back wall into the dark jungle, 
Baderoon helping himself liberally to weapons 
as he left. 

Dwight, tingling with excitement, auto- 
matic in hand, crawled along on all-fours 
behind the curator, who followed Sadok, 
and so they worked steadily toward the beach 
8 99 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


over the thick, soft duff. At length the last 
of the line of canoes, close to the boundary 
of mangroves, rose up ahead, and, one by 
one, they crawled around both sides of it, 
keeping below the gunwale out of sight. 
The lurid glow of the fire was behind them, 
and, silhouetted against it were circles of 
mop-haired savages, singing in unison with 
the beat of the drums, the warriors dancing 
around the fire. 

Quietly they rose and lifted the bow of the 
long boat. Her stern was afloat and she 
gave easily, but it took their combined 
strength to shove her out. At last she 
floated, and they all got in, Sadok giving 
her a last artful shove that sent her silently 
around the end of the mangroves and out 
of sight. They groped for paddles, dipped 
them noiselessly, and stole along, close to 
shore, not even a ripple coming from her 
prow. The noise behind them grew grad- 
ually more indistinct, until the rhythmical 
dub-dub of the drums alone reached them. 

“ Whoosh !” sighed Nicky, at last, and it 
seemed he had been holding his breath for a 
week. “Some get-away! But it’s about 
time those beggars went for their lunch, 
though !” he observed, facetiously, while his 

IOO 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

powerful shoulders swept the paddle easily. 
“‘My — word!’ as Bentham would say, but 
I don’t fancy being fried on stones for these 
heathen! I’ve contributed too many blankets 
and things to missionary boxes — and I want 
my money back!” he laughed. 

“Quiet!” ordered the curator, sternly. 
“This show isn’t over yet, and there may be 
scouts along shore. We’ve got to make 
time!” 

They bent to the paddles, driving the 
heavy canoe along down the shore of the 
lagoon. Fifteen tense minutes passed, while 
black palm fronds and ragged banana leaves 
swept by overhead past the stars. They 
had put nearly a mile between them and the 
landing when — 

“Hist!” called the curator, stopping his 
paddle suddenly. 

A riot of excited yells came faintly through 
the jungle. 

“They’re wise! Hep, boys! hep!” They 
drove the canoe along as fast as she could 
be made to go. She needed at least ten 
paddlers to get any real speed out of her, 
and the boys realized that there would be 
more doings this night! A clearer burst of 
sounds told that the natives had come down 


IOI 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


to the beach and discovered their missing 
canoe. Then torches glared out over the 
black, glassy water, and presently a fleet of 
canoes set out, each with a blazing brand 
flaming on its prow. Some of them set out 
across the lagoon, others went upstream, 
and eight started down the shore, moving 
abreast and covering the water far out. 
Nothing could escape them! 

"Make for the open, Sadok!” called the 
curator over his shoulder to the Dyak, who 
was stern paddle. "We haven’t a chance 
here, but we might get by them out beyond 
the last one out there.” 

They drove the canoe out on the broad 
bosom of the lagoon, the lights from the 
eight flares streaming across the water to 
them in long red pencils, and it seemed 
incredible that they were not seen already. 
The curator, however, knew better the actual 
range of a flare visible from the eyes of a 
man in the boat with it, for he had tried it 
before, jacking deer. The lights came steadily 
on, yells and whoops blaring over the waters. 
The canoes soon passed them, in a long, strag- 
gly line between them and the shore. 

They stopped their own boat and watched 
their pursuers. 


102 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

“Gee! it’s a clean escape !" exulted Dwight, 
“and we're bows on, so it's impossible to see 
us — ” The enthusiasm in his voice trailed 
off as they all paused, holding their breaths, 
to watch the flare on the nearest canoe. It 
seemed to be parting in two and the second 
light grew to a long flame. Then it sud- 
denly rose in a high, curving arc as a flaming 
javelin went up like a rocket. A weird glare 
lit up the water far and wide. 

“Clever stunt! Those savages are sure 
resourceful, I'll say!" admired the curator. 
“We're it , all right!" 

A babel of yells arose from the nearest 
canoe as he spoke, and her light began to 
move out toward them, the flashes of her 
paddles winking like swiftly waving bars of 
light. The other canoes changed course like- 
wise, and the whole pack fanned out in a 
sort of V, with the nearest canoe leading. A 
second flaming javelin soared into the night 
and lit up the waters. Diabolical war whoops 
burst out from all the canoes this time, and 
amid exulting yells a few long-range, roving 
arrows fell into the lagoon around them. 

“Don't anybody shoot, except Sadok, until 
I say the word!" gritted the curator, “and I 
want you boys to call me eighty yards as 
103 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


near as you can judge it when that canoe 
comes that near!” 

Arrows from the nearest boat now began 
to whistle overhead and fall into the bay 
with a sharp chrrp ! like quenching hot iron. 

“Eighty yards, I think, sir,” whispered 
Dwight a few moments later as he peered 
over the gunwale. 

“Just about,” muttered the curator, aiming 
his pistol carefully over braced knees. A 
sharp kjkrrr! came from the weapon as he 
pulled trigger. A tiny spark swept in a flat 
trajectory over to the canoe, and then, like 
detonation of thunder close at hand, came a 
stunning report and the white, blinding glare 
of the explosion of a shell. The flash gave 
them one tremendous, significant glimpse of 
flying splinters and the cannibal canoe dou- 
bling up like a broken stick — and then came 
pitchy, inky darkness, followed by the shouts 
of the savages swimming in the water and 
the roar of a wave rolling swiftly toward them 
which rocked their canoe to her beam ends. 

“Gad! I hate to shoot up these beggars, 
even if they are cannibals bent on dining off 
us!” exclaimed the curator, reloading. “Hope 
they’re mostly scared to death! This second 
shell ought to do it.” 

104 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


He steadied the pistol on his knees and 
aimed at the second canoe, swooping down 
on them, the cannibals yelling and discharg- 
ing flights of arrows into the night. Again 
the blinding white flash and the terrific 
report. The curator had aimed it so as not 
to hit the canoe directly, and they saw a wave 
rise in front of her which engulfed the canoe 
and put her crew powerless in the water. 

But the others came right on, regardless. 
"Paddle, boys! Make it quick and snappy! 
They're closing in on us! Once more ought 
to knock the fight out of them!” He reloaded 
hurriedly and fired at the third canoe, the 
shell exploding in midair right over it. The 
shouts from five canoefuls of bloodthirsty 
cannibals surrounding them, foaming up the 
water with their furious paddles, filled the 
night with pandemonium. Their situation 
looked desperate now, for the Outanatas 
seemed determined upon their recapture and 
they had lost some of their fear of the curator’s 
shells. 

"Fire, boys! for all you’re worth — I’ll give 
you light!” he yelled, whipping out his flash- 
light. "Hold it, Baderoon!” he ordered, as 
the rays from its parabolic reflector shot 
over the water. 

io 5 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


The automatics began to bark, while the 
negro crouched behind the gunwales, shiver- 
ing with fear, yet holding the light steadily 
on two war canoes bunched close together. 
The curator aimed a short-range shell right 
over them, hoping to founder the remaining 
canoes. The fearful concussion of the T. N. 
T. knocked their own party sprawling, and, 
where there had been two canoes, now there 
was a boiling geyser of water in which they 
rose like tossed logs, their crews tumbling 
headlong through the white glare. It proved 
too much for the remaining three canoes. 
The flashlight showed them turning tail and 
paddling away in frantic haste. 

“Travel, Nigger, Travel! — that’s what 
T. N. T. means!” whooped the curator. 
“Paddle, boys, after ’em — hard! I’m going 
to put the fear of God into these people!” 

He aimed the air gun at a high arc, and the 
shell whistled on its way. High over the 
three canoes it exploded, with the strength 
of giant-powder fireworks. Under its glare 
they could see the paddlers knocked hurtling 
with the concussion. 

Baderoon laughed uproariously. “ Yow- 
yowri ! Prenty debbil - debbil, Orang-kaya! 
Make’m thunder — Boom! Boom!" 

106 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


'‘Threw a good scare into ’em! That’s the 
ticket!” grinned the curator. “They’ll swim 
ashore pretty well gentled, I’m thinking! — 
Keep after ’em, boys, as hard as you can 
make her go! They’re gaining on us!” 

He raised the air gun to its utmost eleva- 
tion and the tiny streak of fire of the fuse 
rose in a high arc. It fell into the bay ahead 
of the three canoes, and there was a muffled 
thud which blew the whole bottom out of 
the bay. A white avalanche of water came 
roaring toward the three canoes and their 
bows rose dizzily and then the stems flipped 
high in the air. A babel of yells and shouts 
told of one canoe upset, and then they steadied 
their own to meet the onrushing wave. It 
rocked giddily, like a bark canoe in a boiling 
rapids, and water slapped over her sides in 
a deluge, but her deep keel held her upright. 

“Bail, Dwight — and you, too, Baderoon!” 
ordered the curator. “JNicky, you and Sadok 
keep on paddling. Don’t kill yourselves, as 
we’re out of range of them now. I’m going 
up to that village and lay down the law to 
that whole tribe! They’ll let white men 
alone, after that.” 

They followed slowly in the wake of the 
two fleeing canoes, and finally lay floating 
107 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


idly about a mile out in front of the village. 
The canoes that had gone across the lagoon 
and those from upstream had now returned, 
as they could see by the assembling flares at 
the landing. Howlings and constant booming 
of drums came over the water. They dozed 
on the thwarts, letting the canoe drift and 
waiting for dawn. The noise on shore kept 
up throughout the night, but, after an inter- 
minable wait, a faint paling in the east, 
which swiftly grew to daylight over the calm 
waters of the lagoon, set them to paddling 
slowly toward the shore again. 

As they drew near it was full daylight and 
the clouds overhead were already aflame with 
the rising sun. The curator loaded his airgun 
and stood up in the bow as they approached 
the landing. A deathlike silence reigned 
throughout the jungle. The long black canoes 
lay hauled up in rows, deserted, and not a 
sign of life appeared in the huts nor in the 
glades under the coco palms. 

As their bow grated on the beach, the 
curator took careful aim at the largest of the 
huts and fired. The jungle shook with the 
sharp detonation as the building was torn 
asunder in crackling walls of bamboo and rat- 
tan which immediately took fire. Runnings 
108 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


and scamperings in the forest — and then all 
was silent as the grave again. 

They stepped ashore in a compact little 
party, the boys with ready pistols, Sadok’s 
long sumpitan sweeping every glade for a 
mark. The curator walked to the center of 
the clearing and swept the surrounding forest 
with his arm. 

“Pigs!” he pronounced, in the Arfak dia- 
lect, waving his arm around comprehensively. 

There were rustlings in the jungle, but no 
native dared show himself. 

“Tell them, Baderoon, that white men are 
peaceful — when let alone. Also, that the 
white man will not harm any chief if he will 
step out and talk.” 

Baderoon raised his voice, translating the 
curator’s message. Absolute silence brooded 
in the jungle. 

“Tell them,” said the curator, and his 
voice rang like iron, “that the white man 
would be friends. But if they do not make 
a talk at once he will bring down his thunders 
and lightnings and utterly destroy this vil- 
lage, their canoes, and their cocoanut palms. 
I have spoken it.” 

Baderoon translated, and at this a griz- 
zled old sinner with a white mop of woolly 
109 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 

hair stepped out trembling from behind a 
tree. 

“If the White Thunderer will only deign 
not to utterly destroy us!” he croaked, shak- 
ing all over as Baderoon translated. 

“Ye shall call your old men to tow-tow; 
and ye shall send runners to every village, 
far and near, lest the thunders descend on 
them also!” declared the curator, sternly. 

“It is agreed,” said the old man, finally, 
with shaking voice. “Only let the white 
man not harm us further ! Many warriors and 
many canoes come not back because of him!” 

He called into the forest and three other 
old men came unwillingly forth. They ad- 
vanced, unarmed, to the edge of the clearing, 
stooping down and pouring sand on their 
heads in token of abject submission, but 
that was as far as they could be coaxed to 
come. 

“It is well,” called the curator, at length, 
for he had no wish to risk any undue famili- 
arity with them. “Shoot something, Sadok. 
I want them to fear you, too.” 

Sadok looked around for a mark, and his 
eyes lit on a wandering pig under one of the 
huts. He poised his sumpitan and the dart 
flew out of its muzzle. The pig squealed 

no 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


and twitched his tail, and then went on root- 
ing. In another moment he sighed and laid 
over, dead. 

A shiver and a rustling of leaves ran through 
the underbrush. 

"Ye have seen the silent death, also,” 
said Baderoon, raising his voice at the cura- 
tor’s prompting. "Do not eat the pig; it 
is taboo.” 

One of the old men took off his boars’ tusk 
breastplate and stepped forward and laid it 
on the ground. He testified that it was a 
present. At a sign from the curator Baderoon 
fetched it. The scientist examined it curi- 
ously. The white tusks were laid in rows, 
one atop the other, and their ends were 
bound with fiber network, thickly orna- 
mented with polished red beads. The cura- 
tor started with astonishment as he looked 
closely at them. 

"Ask him where they get those red beads, 
Baderoon.” 

There was some talk and waving of arms, 
and then Baderoon turned to the curator. 
"Him get’m big mountain — down there,” 
he said, pointing to the south. "Mus’ fight 
litty hill men for him. Prenty too-much 
trophy.” 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


“Tell him the white man is pleased, and 
will give a present, too.” 

The curator undid his red-silk bandan- 
na, and Baderoon bore it over ceremoniously 
and laid it before the chief. The latter 
grinned, for the first time, and they could see 
that he was dying to handle it. He nodded 
at the curator with beaming eyes and made 
the pantomime of rubbing noses. 

“Nothing doing!” snorted the curator. 
“That’s where the earlier explorers all lose 
out! The natives soon find out we’re ordi- 
nary, vulnerable human beings, if you let 
them get too familiar. Tell him, Baderoon, 
that the white man says to start his runners 
at once, and never to touch another white 
man so long as he lives! Farewell!” 

He turned to go as Baderoon translated. 
They walked back to the canoes and picked 
out a small one, more easy to handle. Shov- 
ing off, they paddled down the lagoon, the 
curator sitting silently in the stern, for he 
knew that curious eyes were watching him 
from the jungle. A repressed eagerness shone 
in his own as he still examined curiously the 
boars’-tusk breastplate in his hands. 

“Well — I guess that ’ll hold ’em for a time 
— eh, boys?” he smiled, raising his eyes from 
1 1 2 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

it at length when they had left the village 
landing far behind. “And — I may have 
something important to tell you after we 
reach camp!” 

“Some weapon, that air pistol of yours, 
sir!” said Nicky, admiringly. “How did 
you ever get such an idea?” 

“Oh, that was just a hang-over from the 
Western Front,” replied the curator. “I’ve 
been through any number of trench scrim- 
mages, and I learned that it's not the iron 
casing of grenades that does the most mis- 
chief, but the gas itself. It has far more 
rending power than that cast-iron shell of 
the grenade. Remember our old air guns of 
boyhood? Well, I sent some sketches to the 
factory and had them make me this pistol 
on the same lines. These light nickel shells 
of T. N. T. turned out to be as good as heavy 
grenades when I tested them. All that is 
needed is something to throw them with 
accuracy, so I had this gun made and a lot 
of shells, timed for eighty, fifty, and thirty 
yards — which is about as close as you can be 
to them with any safety. That's all there 
is to it. Beats the old dynamite stick that 
they used to use on the savages of the South 
Seas all hollow, I'll say!” 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


They passed the floating wreckage of the 
night before as he spoke, and everyone set 
to work picking up paddles, spears, and 
arrows, the latter sticking up out of water, 
point down, like buoys. Then the curator 
made a grab and hauled aboard a floating 
shield. It was of the same long, oval type 
that the war party had carried the day before, 
and he examined the red paint in the carving 
minutely with his magnifying glass. 

“It's the same mineral we found in Aru, 
Dwight/’ he declared, after a close scrutiny. 
“Wait till we get to camp; I’ve got a fine 
young idea hatching.” 

That was all they could get out of him, 
but the paddles swept on more tirelessly 
than ever, for both boys were consumed with 
curiosity over the new mineral. 

At length they came to their own headland, 
with the frowning ramparts of the mountains 
looming back of them endlessly to the south. 
Here was the mouth of their creek, and up 
it they drove the canoe under the green 
arches of the jungle. After a time it came 
out at the old coral bank, and the abandoned 
sail proa showed up ahead, its bow still on 
the little beach. Sadok and Baderoon jumped 
ashore and set about getting their fire started, 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

while the boys dove for their provision sacks, 
for they had had nothing to eat for twenty- 
four hours and were famished. 

But the curator could not wait. He cut off 
a sliver from the red mineral paint in the 
shield scrolls and scraped a portion of it into 
a small test tube which he got out of his mess 
kit. Filling it with a little water, he went 
over to Nicky’s alcohol flame and brought 
it to a boil. Then he opened a tiny bottle 
of acid and dropped a tear of it into the 
test tube. 

“Gad! boys!” he whooped. “What do 
you think of that?' 1 he cried, holding up the 
tube, now filled with a cloudy yellow pre- 
cipitate. “Remember that red stone we 
got in the channels of Aru, Dwight? Well, 
this is the same mineral, cinnabar , red oxide of 
mercury, boys! If there’s a mountain of it, 
as these natives tell us, back in the hills, 
we’ve got to find it, for, once it is reported, it 
will change the whole history of this part of 
New Guinea. The stuff is worth its weight 
in gold!” 

“Three cheers for Exploration!” mumbled 
Nicky, his mouth stuffed with food. “Have 
some, Professor!” 

9 


VII 


CASSOWARY CAMP 

B ADEROON, how call -him that place 
chief -fellah get red paint?” asked the 
curator, turning to Baderoon from the test 
tube in his hand. 

“Red Mountain!” said Baderoon, promptly. 
“Good Lord!” ejaculated the curator. 
“There can’t be a whole mountain of cinna- 
bar, you know! Why, you could buy out 
the United States Treasury with it! Might 
be a stratum of it — but, no; 1 Red' Mountain! 
If there’s enough of the ore in sight to give 
it that name, it’s something we’ve got to see 
and report. Everything else is insignificant 
compared to this, boys!” he exulted. “I 
discovered a mountain once, in Mexico, near 
the top of which was a thick vein of cinnabar. 
Some day they’ll run a railroad in there and 
get it out, it’s so valuable. But a whole 
mountain of it, and right handy to the sea! 
Why, man, it ’ll make Holland the queen of 
116 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

the world again! Think how the world’s 
mercury is hoarded, for making fulminate, 
for every primer and every shell fuse that is 
shot!” he went on, excitedly. “ Think of 
the explosives possible, with unlimited sup- 
plies of mercury. T. N. T. isn’t in it, com- 
pared with some of the fulminates! The Japs 
won the Russian war with their new camphor 
shell, but their supply of camphor is limited. 
Some day there will be a big war over Red 
Mountain, take it from me!” 

“ ’Ray for Exploration!” crowed Dwight. 
“Come on, Mr. Baldwin; here’s some nice 
wallaby steak!” 

The curator grinned as he came back to 
earth and bit into the succulent meat. “Just 
the same, boys, we’re going to see that moun- 
tain, or die in the attempt. The only thing 
that worries me is how to handle the pygmies. 
It’s right in their country, and we’ll have to 
wade through them to get there. They were 
peaceable enough with the English expedi- 
tion, but that was only because they were 
afraid to start anything. They’re always at 
war with the Papuans, and there’s a sort of 
no-man’s land between the jungle and the 
foothills which cannot be crossed by either 
side without a fight. However, the first 
ii 7 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


thing for us to do is to jerk the rest of this 
wallaby meat and each man carry along a 
bag of pemmican made of it.” 

They erected a pole jerky frame that after- 
noon, and started a small drying fire under 
it, with long strips of the meat hanging in 
rows from the poles. Under the hot tropical 
sun the drying process went on apace, and 
soon the strips had become hard sticks of 
meat, greasy to the touch, hard and fibrous 
as wood. Steadily, also, the collections grew 
larger, box after box being filled with Dwight’s 
insects, Nicky’s reptiles, and the curator’s 
birds, while their big tin of bird skins was 
filled up and sealed. This main collection 
was to be a representative one of the whole 
region, after which only the rarer specimens 
need be sought for. On the third day the 
crate of collections boxes was cached, well 
hidden in a coral cave dug in the thickets. 

Meanwhile Sadok set about replenishing 
his supply of poisoned arrows, as his quiver 
of them had run low. He cut a quantity of 
the long thorns of the sago palm, and near 
the bottom of each he lashed a little cone of 
the corklike bark, so that it would just fit in 
the bore of the sumpitan, which was about 
three eighths of an inch in diameter. For 
118 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


poisoning the points he had a supply of the 
gummy juice of the upas tree, brought from 
Borneo and carefully kept in a small bamboo 
bottle which hung on his belt. 

Sadok was grouched. A faint but noise- 
some odor came from somewhere in the jun- 
gle, where his three heads were drying, but 
here, look you, had been two fights with the 
Outanatas since, and never a head for his 
personal collection! He was comforted, how- 
ever, by the curator telling him that the 
upas vine, or some other representative of the 
strychnine family, grew in New Guinea, also, 
and that there would be plenty of ructions 
before he ever saw Borneo again. 

Their stay at this camp had given them 
not only a fair idea of the general features 
of the country, but of the weather as well. 
Under the west monsoon, its daily changes 
were as regular as clockwork. A fine cool 
dawn, followed by several hours of misty 
and clearing weather when it was good to 
be up and doing; then the heat of midday, 
when even the jungle people knew enough 
to take a siesta; and then, about four o'clock, 
a tropical thunderstorm of the utmost vio- 
lence, lasting until eight at night, when the 
sky cleared off. They soon learned to plan 
119 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


their day according to these weather changes, 
and at length the party broke camp for the 
long trek into the mountains. They fol- 
lowed much the same trail as before, to the 
table-lands along the mountain flank, and 
stopped for lunch on the pebbly site of their 
capture by the war party of the Outanatas 
of the week before. 

But with what different feelings now! 
Then the fear of the unknown, the dread of 
meeting cannibal savages who would surely 
regard them as but strangers to be killed and 
eaten at sight. Now a feeling of confidence 
replaced all that. They had established 
the superiority of the white man in all that 
region, the respect in the native mind that 
is based only on superior force. Not even 
a native runner had dared show his face 
since that punitive expedition of the cura- 
tor’s. They even felt confident to hunt 
singly, not too far from the main party. 
While the others were settling down for the 
noonday siesta in the heat of midday, Dwight 
spied a flash of brilliant orange in the greens 
of the jungle across the creek, and set out 
alone after the bird, shotgun in hand. The 
orange spot flew off into the jungle as he 
drew near it, but Dwight had caught a 
120 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


glimpse of black-velvet plumage, and that 
flaming fire of orange on the throat, which 
made him tingle all over with the thrill that 
it might be the exceedingly rare six-shafted 
bird of paradise! He followed on through 
the jungle, his eyes fixed on that small dot 
of black perched far ahead, high in the tree 
tops. Moving as cautiously as he could, 
he worked through the festooned creepers 
and the huge boles of giant jungle trees 
toward his prize. But to his chagrin, it 
flew off again, just as he was about to try 
the spiteful little twenty-gauge at long range. 

The boy’s eyes followed the bird avidly. 
To bring back a six-shafter! Why, all this 
expedition had been for just such a prize 
as this! Nothing is known of this bird save 
what can be conjectured from the few skins 
now in the world’s museums. To add one 
more to that meager collection, each speci- 
men with who knows what story of adven- 
ture and privation behind it, seemed to 
Dwight a corking enterprise. Using all the 
woodcraft he possessed, he worked silently 
through the jungle. Experience had taught 
him to look ahead for a place to plant each 
footstep, not only to be sure that one did 
not step on a snake, but also to insure the 

12 I 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


foot coming down in position to fire instantly. 
With gun muzzle up, he advanced carefully, 
praying earnestly that his quarry might 
linger just a few minutes more. 

Again the paradise bird fluttered off, and 
this time Dwight had but a line on where 
he had gone, for the last glimpse of him dis- 
appeared through the jungle, far off through 
the tree trunks. He groaned with disap- 
pointment, but he was not the boy to give 
up while there was a ghost of a chance left. 
Fixing on a tall Erythrina as the last tree 
past which the bird had soared, he set out 
as fast as possible. In perhaps half an hour 
he reached the tree, and, taking the range, 
set out again, his eyes scrutinizing the leafy 
foliage of the jungle roof. He had about 
begun to lose hope now, and, moreover, to 
realize that he was totally lost in the jungle, 
far from his companions, when a flutter of 
wings some distance ahead showed him his 
siren bird, flitting about and feeding on 
clusters of blue tropical berries that hung 
in the foliage of a high tree top that loomed 
up ahead. 

Dwight heaved a sigh of relief. The bird 
would surely stay there, feeding, and he had 
plenty of time for a careful stalk. He 


122 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


wormed through the jungle, and at last 
arrived where an aim could be had, at not 
more than forty yards. Raising the gun 
carefully, he fired, and down came his prize, 
at last! 

It was with a sort of breathless wonder 
that Dwight looked over the six-shafted 
bird of paradise as he lifted it gently out of 
the dense undergrowth in which it had fallen. 
Why did nature lavish such abundant beauty 
on a bird destined never to be seen by eyes 
that could appreciate it? Human eyes, that 
is, for, of course, the bird would be forever 
a delight to the eyes of that dull-colored 
little mate of his whose protection demanded 
something less gorgeously visible. It made 
him feel how insignificant is man in nature's 
world. Man, the animal, as exhibited by 
the naked savages who inhabited this forest 
was Nature’s own child; assuredly this bird 
was not so decorated to please him! Man, 
the intellectual, civilized man, could feel a 
thrill of rapture over this creature of Nature’s, 
admire its intense golden-orange throat scales, 
its rich, velvety, purple-black plumage, its 
crown of vivid emerald and topaz colors, 
with the long wire-haired plumes springing 
back like a coronet from its head; but Nature 
123 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


cared nothing for intellectual man and his 
mind, which was not of her doing, and she 
certainly did not make this bird for him! 
In fact, we are each one of us two people, 
Dwight philosophized, amusing himself with 
these fancies as he examined the paradise 
bird in his hand — man the animal, the 
creature of Nature, living very like the ani- 
nals themselves and dependent on her, like 
them; and man, the intellectual, a creature 
of a power that is above Nature, the Being 
from whom sprang art, religion, philosophy, 
science, all the things that are above Nature 
and essentially antagonistic to her. But 
in the end Nature always has her revenge, 
for her jungles reclaim proud cities, as in 
India and Central America, or her deserts 
isolate them, as Athens and the Parthenon, 
or her sands bury them, like Egypt and the 
Sphinx. 

“All that sermon from one small tropical 
bird!” laughed Dwight to himself, carelessly, 
as his thoughts came back to earth again. 
“Nature may be irreconcilably hostile to 
us — but, where am I now, and how am I 
going to get out? That's the real question 
for this man!” 

He had no idea how or where his wander- 


124 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

ings in pursuit of the paradise bird had taken 
him. All that was certain was that he had 
not crossed the creek again, and that he was 
somewhere east of it. He laid a course west 
with the compass, and set out, confident that 
he would sooner or later strike the stream. 

But Nature proceeded to show him how 
utterly insignificant to her is man. The 
first indication of it was a large plop of her 
tropical rain which fell on his helmet. Dwight 
looked up, surprised to see the sky overcast 
and the thunders of the daily afternoon 
tropical storm muttering in the mountains. 
He must have been several hours following 
this six-shafter! He hurried on back toward 
the creek, stumbling through the jungle and 
striving to stifle panicky impulses to run. 
It was essential to keep his head, and to 
pick out landmark trees, methodically, ahead 
on his course, for you cannot steer yourself 
like a ship with the compass in the jungle. 
He forced his attention upon this, ignoring 
the raindrops, the steady patter of which 
kept up in the tree tops. The wetted under- 
growth soon soaked his thin khaki. He 
now bitterly regretted setting out without 
his pack. Just a moment to have shouldered 
it would have been enough, but he had been 
125 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 

too eager, too afraid to lose sight of his 
precious prize. 

A distant roar of wind, and an angry can- 
nonade of thunder came from the west, 
setting the jungle to rocking and tossing 
overhead, while birds flew wildly through 
the tree tops, croaking and screeching harshly. 
Dwight stopped and listened to it. He was 
trembling all over with the wet cold, and 
sharp chills were running through him. Now 
or never was the time for a signal, for no 
sound would carry far after the rain came. 
He raised his gun, fired both barrels, and 
listened with all his ears. 

No answer, save the roar of the rain, 
sounding louder and louder and coming 
nearer and nearer. He looked about for 
the largest tree near him and ran for it. 
The branches of wind-lashed forest were now 
parting overhead, and out of the dark gray 
came vivid flashes of lightning which filled the 
jungle with winking light. The long ropes of 
creepers which climbed up to the branches of 
his tree from the jungle floor swung solemnly 
in the wind, and Dwight crept under them 
and huddled close against the trunk, cower- 
ing in the buttresses of the great roots. 

Then came the rain, in furious white sheets 
126 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


that filled the forest with a flying haze. It 
soaked him instantly to the skin, while peal 
after peal of thunder went off like cannon 
shots. An ungovernable terror seized the 
boy — the fury of the wind-driven rain, the 
loneliness, the crashing and riving of limbs 
and branches — and he lifted up his voice in 
one last, despairing yell with every ounce of 
lung power that he possessed. 

There was no answer — save a low, sibilant 
hiss, which sounded through the lowering 
gloom, close at hand, whispering sharp and 
clear in his ears above the noise of the storm! 
Dwight, startled with a shiver of fright, 
looked up, to perceive that one of the great 
vines overhead was not a creeper, but a huge 
python, lowering himself steadily, his neck 
crooked, and his head drawn back to strike 
at him! His gun flashed to shoulder, and 
both barrels went off blindly as the boy's 
nerves collapsed with the shock of horror 
and he sank down in a shivering heap. He 
had a dim feeling of yards and yards of snake 
tumbling down through the vines beside 
him, but he seemed not to care about it at 
all, for it was comfortable down here between 
these roots ... if he could only find a place 
for his head . . . 


127 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


When he came to it was pitch dark and 
the storm had gone on. A scampering of 
jungle rats made off through the black as 
Dwight moved his cramped limbs wearily, 
to find them aching all over and his face hot 
and flushed with fever, while violent chills 
kept running upward through his body. 

He peered about him, bewildered; then 
conscious ideas began to pelt in upon him. 

“F-f-fire! Quick-ick as I can m-make 
one!” he chattered to himself, fumbling for 
his pocket flasher. Its small but brilliant 
light lit up the jungle, causing many an 
outcry of night birds and a scurrying over 
the forest floor of land crabs and small mar- 
supials. It also revealed the tumbled heap 
of the python lying beside him, its neck shot 
in two and parts of its reticulated length 
already gnawed by rodents. He glanced at 
it casually; to get wood that would burn 
was the real worry now! the jungle was 
black as a pocket, and a wan mist hung 
through it. After one flash of the light on 
those miasmas, drifting like pale death through 
the trees, Dwight hurriedly got out his med- 
icine kit and swallowed some quinine. Then 
he sought kindlings in the underbrush, break- 
ing twigs here and there, but they were all 
128 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


sodden and moldy. He felt sick all over and 
burning with fever, and he wanted to lie 
down again and sleep forever; but it was 
most imperative to stay alive, so he started 
off through the jungle in search of firewood, 
stumbling westward by compass, until a 
great tangle of vines ahead of him told of a 
prone dead tree. 

His spirits rose as his eye lit on it, and he 
pushed his way under the great bole with 
ready shotgun, for he could not tell how 
many jungle dwellers might have camped 
under it during the storm. A grand scam- 
pering and creeping rustled the dry leaves 
under the trunk, but it soon stopped and the 
flashlight showed the cavelike space all clear. 
Dwight shouldered his way into it, and at 
once cleared a space for a fire and began 
peeling off strips of dry bark from the under 
side of the tree. Blessed, blessed fire! The 
one human thing in all this dark jungle! 
That was the turning point in his mental 
distress, for dejection gave way to cheerful- 
ness, wandering homelessness to a hearth 
and a campfire. Soon the warmth of its 
small blaze penetrated even his chilled bones, 
and it and the quinine gradually drove off 
his fever. Dwight waited out the night 

129 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


under the trunk, trying the cave man’s 
posture of sleep, squatting on his hams with 
his head resting on arms crossed over his 
knees (still used by the hill men of India 
and by many tribes of the Malay Archi- 
pelago). He found it not so bad, even 
though irksome to a white man’s heel tendon. 
Keeping the fire going with bark and small 
branches broken from the tree trunk, he 
gradually dried out, and at length there 
came the dawn of another day and the jungle 
awoke to life. 

Starting off by compass again, he steered 
due west, bound in time to strike the brook. 
It was not for an hour more of traveling that 
the jungle began to lighten on ahead, and 
bits of sky, glimpses of mountain side, and 
the tops of low trees told him he was coming 
to where the brook skirted the plateau. 
Dense, thorny underbrush began to block 
his way now, and beyond it came the rippling 
murmur of the stream. He shouted for the 
curator and his party, hoping that he was 
near enough to camp for his voice to be 
heard. No answer came, except the sough 
of the wind over the grasses and bushes of 
the plateau, so Dwight decided to get out 
into the open and study the mountains for 

130 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

something familiar. He forced his way to 
the stream side and jumped across. 

He discovered, from the familiar head- 
lands of the mountain chain, that he was 
some distance above camp. It seemed well 
to fire another signal in the open, and he 
was about to do so when three large birds 
as big as ostriches jumped from the grass 
in the swales and began to run, making a 
scraping, cackling noise something like the 
wild brush-turkey. 

“ Cassowaries !” exclaimed Dwight, thrilling 
with adventure again as his gun sprang to 
shoulder. They were running like deer, their 
red, wattled heads and bright-blue necks 
stretched out ahead like giant chickens. 
His shotgun held only sixes, so Dwight aimed 
for the speeding head of the nearest casso- 
wary as at a flying quail, swinging ahead and 
firing like a wing shot. 

The cassowary went down, while the other 
two flapped off in a wild burst of speed, using 
their wings to aid their legs. Dwight rushed 
out, intending to finish off his bird with the 
knife, as he did not wish to injure the skin 
of the specimen with a close-up shot. The 
great bird lay in the grass as he came up, 
its fiery eye looking at him, unconquered, 
10 13 1 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 

like a rooster that has been worsted in a 
fight. As he rushed up it flew at him, squawk- 
ing discordantly. Dwight beat him off with 
the barrels of his gun. The air seemed full 
of the great black wings of his adversary, 
blinding him with blows of the coarse, double- 
quilled pinions. It never occurred to him 
that a cassowary could be really dangerous, 
and he laughed confidently as the heavy bird 
fell to the ground and prepared to spring 
again. With the second leap its long blue 
neck lunged out and its blunt bill caught his 
shirt collar and held on like a snapping turtle, 
while its stout legs drummed fiercely on his 
chest. Dwight felt the canvas of his coat 
being ripped, and then a sharp pain seared 
down his breast to the belt like a hot iron. 
He was now fighting off the cassowary des- 
perately, stabbing blindly, and warding off 
the blows of the wings on his head with his 
left arm. The tearing and rending of its legs 
on his chest kept up with increasing violence, 
and he was forced to bring his elbows in close 
to protect his stomach, dropping his knife 
and grabbing with his hands at the stout feet 
of the cassowary — anything to prevent being 
disemboweled ! 

Then a shiver went through the bird, its 

132 



THEN A SHIVER WENT THROUGH THE BIRD, ITS EYES FLUTTERED 
CLOSED, AND THE GRIP OF ITS BILL LOOSENED, WHILE THE BOY TUGGED 

HIMSELF FREE 



. 









' 








































* 


■ 





■ 













' 

















IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


eyes fluttered closed, and the grip of its bill 
loosened, while the boy tugged himself free. 
He jumped for his knife in a battling rage, 
intending to close in and finish his adversary, 
who was now kicking feebly, when he heard 
a shout, and turned to see Sadok and the 
curator come running across the swales. A 
sumpitan dart sticking in the bird’s side 
told all! 

“Did he hurt you?” yelled the curator, 
sprinting toward him. “Don’t ever go near 
a wounded cassowary, you darn fool!” he 
exploded, wrathfully, as he came up. “Don’t 
you know they’re more dangerous than a 
kangaroo? Look!” 

He stooped and held up the bird’s claw. 
On the inside toe was a long hooked talon, 
curved and sharp as a tiger’s claw. 

“Did he get you with it?” demanded the 
curator, looking at him anxiously, for Dwight 
still stood looking at him, speechless, holding 
to his chest with his left hand. 

“Guess he did!” gasped the boy, swaying 
weakly. He lifted his hand and his fingers 
ran red with blood. 

“Catch him, Sadok!” warned the curator 
as his own hand dove for the first aid in his 
hip pocket. Dwight leaned against Sadok’s 
133 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


strong shoulder, while the curator opened 
his shirt and examined the wound hastily. 
Two long gashes in his chest bled rather 
freely, but nothing serious had been cut. 

“ Lucky for you, son! He’d have ripped 
you open just as nice! Lot’s of new-chums 
have been killed that way!” said the curator, 
cheerfully. 

“Lie down awhile; you’ll feel better pres- 
ently,” he ordered, for Dwight was white as 
a sheet. “But, congratulations, boy, first 
of all, on your getting back to us! I had not 
time to say so, you know, in the excitement 
of this ruction,” he apologized. “We’ll have 
to hunt in pairs in the future. Where have 
you been, Dwight, and why did you stay 
out all night?” 

“It was worth it!” smiled the boy, feebly, 
and he dug into his coat pocket and brought 
out the six-shafted bird of paradise, carefully 
swathed in his handkerchief. 

The curator undid the fastenings; then a 
whoop of joy escaped him. 

“Boy!” he beamed, reaching forward to 
shake Dwight’s hand again. “It sure was 
worth it! Man, it’s the big prize of the expe- 
dition — so far!” 

He and Sadok then fired shots and called 


134 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


until they brought Nicky and Baderoon out 
of the jungle. Nicky came up on the run. 

“Where’s Dwight? What’s happened?” he 
cried, anxiously; then, catching sight of 
Dwight: “You — old — hatrack!” he burbled, 
flinging himself affectionately on his chum. 
“Say, the whole camp was worrying about 
you and firing guns, last night! Get lost 
in the jungle?” 

“Nope. He got — this!” cut in the curator, 
holding up the flaming glories of the paradise 
bird for Nicky to admire. “And then — a 
cassowary tried to scrape an acquaintance 
with him, so to speak!” He laughed, pointing 
out the huge bird lying in the grass, with 
Sadok working over his skin. 

“And, b’lieve me, your li’l’ old dart got 
there just in time!” chirped Dwight from the 
grass. “Shake, Sadok!” 

“Make a stretcher out of a couple of coats 
and two poles, boys!” ordered the curator, 
energetically, as Sadok finished the casso- 
wary skin with a grunt of satisfaction. “We 
four ’ll tote him to camp. How about Camp 
Cassowary for a name for this stop, hey, 
boys?” 


VIII 


PYGMY LAND 


“ HIS is not an expedition — it’s getting 



1 to be a hospital!” exclaimed the cura- 
tor, whimsically, as Dwight was tucked away 
under his own tent fly. “Baderoon’s arm 
is still game, and Dwight will be at least three 
days getting healed up — yet. Did you ever 
see such glorious country to move about in, 
or such wonderful weather?” 

Nicky agreed with him. He had collected 
in British Guiana and the West Indies, yet 
this was the first time he had been free of the 
eternal green maze of the deep jungle. Up 
here, high on the mountain flanks, it was hot 
and dry, and the vegetation was more like 
the open African veldt. Across the creek, 
to the east, and down into the lowlands, 
swept the damp jungle; back of camp, to 
the west, rose the mountain sides, inviting 
them irresistibly to climb up and see what 
might be seen from their tops. 

Dwight’s adventure with the cassowary 


136 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

had upset their plans badly. There was no 
telling how soon he could move, for wounds 
in the tropics have an aggravating way of 
infecting and becoming obstinate about heal- 
ing. The curator chafed over the delay, 
scarce daring to hope that the dry, breezy 
climate of the mountains would bring a swift 
closing of the scratches of the cassowary's 
claw. He considered, meanwhile, the advis- 
ability of setting out with Nicky on a scout- 
ing tour, leaving Sadok and Baderoon to 
guard the camp. He finally decided to risk 
a day’s absence. 

“Dwight,” said he, coming over to the 
boy’s tent after making up his mind, “Nicky 
and I are going to climb this mountain back 
of us, and do some mapping and exploring 
from its top. We’ll be gone all day, and 
possibly the night, too. It’s taking a chance, 
to break up our party this way, I know, but 
half our time has already gone by since the 
proa left, and we must be up and doing. I’m 
leaving you the most deadly weapon I’ve 
got.” He pulled out a bright, shiny, nickel 
bomb from a flap case on his belt. It seemed 
very light and fragile to Dwight as he handled 
it. 

“I call it the 'explorer’s bomb,’” said the 
i37 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


curator. “It’s filled with H. E. explosive. 
To arm it you bend this little copper pro- 
jection over until it breaks off and you hear 
a hiss. Then throw it for all you're worth 
and run! If a war party comes up, and they 
won't keep their distance or act hostile, 
throw it among them, and then you and 
the others bolt for cover. He unbelted the 
bomb's carrying case, and Dwight replaced 
the missile in it gingerly. “You won't have 
to use it, I'm sure," said the curator, con- 
fidently. “Between the lakatoi and the canoe 
fight we've got a reputation for being best 
left alone, in this region, I’m thinking." 

He and Nicky set off early next morning. 
They went straight up the mountain side 
through the thick and thorny jungle. The 
geological formation was of comparatively 
recent lava rock, and the regular slope sig- 
nified that an old extinct volcano crater 
formed its top, no doubt long since filled up 
and overgrown. As they climbed steadily 
higher, and wider and wider vistas of the 
country came to view, this impression was 
confirmed. High up on the slopes a regular 
talus of broken lava rock from some former 
eruption barred their way. The bowlders 
were of all sizes and their crevices and sunny 
138 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


flats held many a snake, so that Nicky, as 
“snakologist” of the expedition, felt con- 
strained to cut a snake stick and go after 
them. 

The curator lit his pipe and sat down to 
spy out the country, meanwhile, with his 
glasses. Presently Nicky passed him, carry- 
ing a long stick of lignum- vitas with a length 
of string tied to its top. Just under it he 
had nailed a staple with the string looped 
through it. Nicky stalked along, jumping 
from rock to rock, his eyes intent below him. 
Presently he made a quick jab with the 
stick, pulled tight on the string, and then 
bore aloft a squirming red-and-black serpent, 
vainly winding itself around the end of the 
stick, while its head struck futilely at the 
empty air. 

“Elaterus wallacei — deadly poisonous/’ an- 
nounced Nicky, scientifically, holding up the 
creature for the curator to admire. “ Isn’t 
he a beauty?” 

“ Handsome!” agreed the curator, laugh- 
ingly. “Not quite so near, Nick — and I 
hope you’ve got tight hold of that string!” 

“Sure! Watch me make a specimen of 
him!” said the enthusiast, picking up a small 
club. He held the end of the snake stick 
139 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


down on a rock, where a few judgmatical 
raps reduced his captive to a scientific 
curiosity. 

Nicky dropped him in a small canvas bag 
which was pretty sure to have a few lizards 
and frogs and turtles in it, also, at any given 
time of day, and they set out upward again. 
A wide belt of century plants barred their 
way as they climbed higher. They grew in 
rank profusion, the great green leaves cross- 
ing in every direction, six feet high, and all 
armed with a dagger point at the tip and 
saw teeth along the blades. A man’s eyes 
would be worth nothing if he once got him- 
self well into them. 

A detour of about a mile brought them 
around the century plants, and then came 
lava escarpments, steep and difficult to climb. 
Up them they swarmed, and found themselves 
on a gradually rising, arid table-land with 
sparse vegetation growing all about, and 
magnificent views out in every direction. 

Working southward, they finally came out 
on a bald knob that the curator had noted 
from the camp below and had determined to 
reach. Here the view was superb, wonder- 
ful — when you came to consider that all you 
looked at below was new and unmapped 

140 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


country. The curator’s pocket aneroid gave 
their height at a little over six thousand feet. 
Far over to the east could be made out the 
dim outlines of Geelvink Bay, with the 
limitless Pacific behind it. Below them, to 
the west, the slopes ran down sharply to the 
mangrove swamps that lined the shores 
fronting on the Banda Sea, with the long 
point of Cape Debelle jutting out as if on a 
small relief map directly below them. 
Beyond it, far over the sea, a bank of clouds 
on the horizon told them of Aru, a hundred 
miles away. 

But it was to the south that their eyes 
turned with the most inquiring interest. 
Here the ranges rose higher and higher, under 
heavy banks of clouds, until, on the extreme 
horizon, the sun glinted on a white, snowy 
sea of mountains, jagged with peaks and 
caps, with Carstensz (17,000 feet) just visible 
as a tiny jutting point of white. Two hun- 
dred years ago Jan Carstensz, navigating 
along these shores, caught a glimpse of the 
Snow Mountains from the decks of his vessel 
and reported them in the ship’s log. It was 
such a rare glimpse, behind the eternal veil 
of clouds that shrouds the interior of New 
Guinea, that no one believed him. From 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


that day to this, a lifting of the jungle clouds 
hanging low over the mountains, and the 
white man present to see them, have never 
come at the same time, so that even the 
existence of the high fellows in the interior 
has been regarded as a wild tale of Jan Car- 
stensz. It was not for more than two cen- 
turies later, in 1911, that Jan Lorentz, another 
intrepid Hollander, with a party of twenty 
Dyaks, made a dash through the pygmy 
country and ascended the first one of the 
Snow Mountains, naming it Mt. Wilhelmina 
in honor of the Dutch queen. 

From their own knob another wonderful 
feature of the country could also be seen, 
extending southward in a long flat perspec- 
tive — the Great Precipice. For two hundred 
miles this precipice extends like a rampart, 
dividing the mountains from the flat jungle. 
It rises sometimes to a sheer height of ten 
thousand feet, undoubtedly the grandest prec- 
ipice in the world. Sloping up to it, they 
could make out the jungle-clad talus, and 
beyond that the lowlands of the river country, 
widening out more and more as the coast 
land flowed southward. Dozens of rivers, 
they knew, cut through this jungle, out of 
sight in the green sea of foliage, and here was 

142 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


the scene of the English expedition, their 
party arriving full of hope and confidence, 
only to be baffled by the precipice and the 
swift floods of the rivers from getting farther 
than the foothills of the Snow Mountains. 
Here they had discovered the race of pygmies, 
and had visited one of their villages, col- 
lected implements of war and domestic usage, 
and, most valuable of all, a list of some four- 
teen words in their tongue, now carefully 
preserved for future use in the curator’s 
notebook. 

"Nicky,” said the curator, after a long 
and careful examination of a spot on the 
jungly hills to the south of them, "I wish 
you would take a look at that scar over yon- 
der, where a sort of ravine seems to run down 
the second mountain to the south of us. My 
eyes may be deceiving me, but — ” He handed 
over the glasses. 

Nicky looked eagerly, with his fresh young 
eyes glued to the binoculars. 

"Huts! Little huts, ’way up in the tree 
tops! I’m sure of it!” he cried, after a 
careful scrutiny. 

"I knew it!” said the curator, quietly. 
"Those huts up in the tree tops are where 
the unmarried girls of the pygmy tribes sleep. 
143 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


That marks it as a pygmy village. See if 
you can’t make out larger huts on the ground.” 

Nicky studied the jungle awhile, with 
intense concentration. “I see them,” he 
cried, handing the curator the glasses. “The 
small huts are built up in bare pandanus 
trees, and under the palms and bamboos 
around them I can see a brown shape like a 
bear’s back — that’s a thatched hut.” 

Baldwin agreed with him, after a look for 
himself. Together they planned a route to 
reach the village in about two days’ march. 

“Say, Mr. Baldwin, that war party of the 
Outanatas was on its way for a fight with 
them , when they came upon us — that’s my 
hunch!” declared Nicky, with sudden con- 
viction. 

“No doubt! There’s probably more or 
less of an old trail, if we look for it. And 
now for some plane-table surveys, Nicky.” 

The curator unfolded a large blank sheet 
among the rear pages of his notebook, and 
on it drew a rough map of the country, with 
Nicky to help with comment and suggestion. 
Then out of his mess kit he took a flat, round 
brass box, which turned out to be a compass 
with folding sight bars. With this compass, 
bearing sights were taken of all the promi- 
144 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


nent peaks and hills in sight, and the map was 
then corrected to agree with the bearings. 

Then the curator indicated a tall banyan 
tree growing on the end of a spur of the 
mountain opposite to them to the south. 

“See that tree, Nick?” he asked. “We’ll 
climb up there to-morrow, and take all these 
bearings again from that point. Where they 
intersect these we have taken from here will 
be the true positions of all these interior peaks 
and valleys on our maps. That’s the way 
we make an accurate plane-table survey.” 

“How about the distance from here to the 
banyan tree as a base line?” objected Nicky. 
“How ’ll we lay that out on the map? We 
don’t know it.” 

“We’ll measure it, son. We’ll lay off a 
base line down in those open swales where 
the cassowary got his Dwight, so to speak, 
and we’ll sight this knob and the banyan 
tree, both, from below. With a known base, 
and the two triangles erected on it by bearing 
angles, it’s a cinch to calculate the distance 
from this knob to the banyan.” 

They descended the mountain to camp, 
finding Dwight up and about and puttering 
around his camp, an occupation he dearly 
loved. Baderoon was loafing to his heart’s 
145 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


content, and Sadok had succeeded in adding 
a rare black cockatoo to the collections. 
That evening Nicky and the curator went 
into the open and measured off a base line. 
From both ends of it their mountain knob 
and the banyan tree on the next mountain 
to the south could be sighted. The compass 
was set up on a stake, and the bearings of 
both points carefully taken from each end 
of the base line. It was dark when they got 
through. 

After the camp had fed for the night, the 
curator came over to Nicky's fly and squatted 
there, with his notebook spread out. He 
first laid off their base line in a small number 
of the blue-line squares on a page of the note- 
book. From the ends of this he drew the 
angles they had taken with the compass. 
They formed two thin, wedge-shaped tri- 
angles, slanting away from the base line in 
opposite directions. Counting the blue 
squares between the outer points of these 
two triangles gave the distance between the 
knob and the banyan tree compared with the 
base line, from which it was easy to figure 
the actual distance. Laying this out on his 
map, they were ready for the climb next 
day. 


146 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

It did not seem possible to Nicky that they 
could climb up a new mountain, clear up to 
that banyan tree, without a series of hair- 
raising adventures, but, strange to say, it 
was done! The boy began to study out this 
phenomenon, finally, so unusual did it seem, 
and he found the secret of it lay in the cura- 
tor’s method. He was after a plane-table 
survey, now, and so he let all the wild creatures 
alone — and they let him alone! Cassowaries 
and brush turkeys ran off, squawking cackles 
through the swales of saw grass, but the 
curator heeded them not. Wallaby s leapt 
for cover, and were let go free. They passed 
a high pandanus with a tree kangaroo crawl- 
ing in its top, but no Nicky was detailed to 
go up after him. Snakes of high and low 
degree, fascinating in the extreme to Nicky, 
went squirming on their ways unchased. 
Even a cuscus of a new kind was passed by 
unmolested. Nicky perceived that trouble 
would not hunt you, if you did not seek it, 
in the New Guinea jungle. In a surprisingly 
short time they were at the foot of the banyan 
tree and truing up all the points on the map 
with intersecting lines drawn from their 
position. 

“ Besides which, we have added a lot of stuff 
147 


11 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


to the north which I can correct with coast 
surveys,” concluded the curator as he folded 
the pocket notebook. “I reckon this map 
will admit me to the Royal Geographic and 
entitle me to a whole alphabet tacked on after 
my name — much that I care!” he laughed. 
‘ ‘The thing for us to do now is to push on 
and visit the pygmies, and then for Cinnabar 
Mountain! Sorry this survey did not show 
it up. Must be farther on to the south.” 

Next day camp was broken and the whole 
party was on the move. Baderoon was 
entirely well, now, and Dwight so far healed 
that he and Sadok had overturned nearly 
every rock near camp the day before, adding 
hundreds of new beetles to his collection. 
They followed at first the old war trail of the 
Outanatas, and then, as it deviated away, 
took the route planned out by Nicky and the 
curator through the mountains from the 
knob. That night the tents were pitched 
on the edge of a warm, dry field of yellow 
grass, with coco palms and wild, small- 
fruited bananas crowding out into the clear- 
ing. A little stream, flowing into their old 
friend the creek, gave their roots the necessary 
water, and made a rill to camp besides. It 
all reminded Nicky and Dwight of some of 

148 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

their earlier Florida camps with the curator, 
and they felt entirely at home. 

At dawn each man cooked him a breakfast, 
rolled up his pack, and by sunup they were 
on the trail again. From across the valley, 
a look-see by Nicky up on the hillside dis- 
closed the pygmy village, now not half a 
day's march away, and they went along 
cautiously, guns and pistols ready and the 
curator’s air gun loaded with a short-range 
shell, for they might come on a party of them 
unexpectedly and no one could foresee the 
outcome. About a mile from the village 
they halted, and chose an easily defended 
position on the mountain side. There they 
waited for some of the pygmies to come that 
way. There was a well-defined trail just 
below them, and they judged that it was 
often used. In perhaps an hour voices came 
along it through the jungle. A small party, 
of four warriors and a dog, were walking 
single file along the path, and at sight of the 
curator they all stopped with guttural excla- 
mations of alarm. 

It seemed to Dwight that he had never 
looked upon such villainous-looking little 
men. They were about four feet six inches 
high, the tallest not four feet nine; brownish 
149 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


black in color; and, instead of the Papuan 
mop of frizzled hair, their heads were nearly 
bald, with black chin and side whiskers, in 
a sort of thick mane from ear to ear. They 
carried bows at least a foot longer than they 
were tall, spears, and a net bag slung over 
the shoulder. Each man had also a small 
sack containing his fire sticks and other 
belongings slung about his neck. In place 
of the usual loin cloth, or just plain nudity, 
each wore a long, yellow half gourd, hung 
from a string around his middle and secured 
by a thong through the crotch. 

Dwight thrilled to realize that he was 
looking upon the original aborigines of New 
Guinea. Like the Negritos of the Philippines, 
and our own cave men forbears, they were 
short, strong little men, with well-developed 
muscles and stout legs, and they were in a 
high state of hunting-tribe civilization, as 
shown by the decency of the gourd, the 
absence of barbaric ornament, and the effi- 
cient hunter's equipment that each man 
carried. They did not seem particularly 
afraid, but stood staring at the white party, 
arrows on bow, ready for any eventuality. 

The curator grinned .and, pointing at the 
mangy-looking dog, “ Wiwi!” he pronounced. 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


The four started with astonishment, to 
hear a word in their own tongue spoken by 
this strange-looking white man. 

Then, pointing at the most clownish-looking 
one of the four, “ Amare-ta?” (“His?”) he 
asked, smiling genially. 

The man was evidently the butt and good 
fellow of the crowd, for the shot about it being 
his dog went home. A black-whiskered old 
pirate, who was evidently their leader, cracked 
a smile and nodded his head. Then they 
began to chatter among themselves, excitedly. 
Evidently they had heard of the English 
expedition from their own tribes to the south. 
The English had treated them well, experi- 
enced as they are in handling natives. 

“Kami oro-ta?” (“Your houses?”) asked 
the curator, next. “Gosh! boys, I only 
know fourteen words of their language, but 
I’m working them for all they are worth!” 
he exclaimed in an aside to their own party. 

The pygmies grinned and nodded again, 
dropping their arrow points in a more friendly 
manner. He was winning them fast. 

“ Kema-u-uteri!” said the old fellow, vigor- 
ously, pointing toward the village. 

“He means they’re going to give us a pig 
and some coconuts,” explained the curator 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


to his own party. “They want us to come 
up to the village. I guess not! We’ll stay 
right here and see what next.” 

He nodded his thanks for their offer; then, 
“ Area-ta ku /” (“My boat!”) he said to the 
pygmies, waving his hand toward the lagoon 
down in the valleys. “ Uta doro-ta /” he 
added, pointing to their camp site, the words 
telling them that his fire would be made 
there. 

The four nodded and grinned as the curator 
signified politely that they were welcome to 
visit him. Then they started up the trail, 
with many a backward glance of curiosity. 

“Now, then, boys, it’s up to us to barri- 
cade this camp and make it as strong for 
defense as we can, until we see how every- 
thing turns out,” said the curator, energet- 
ically, after they had gone. 

The site was admirably chosen. A huge 
prone bole lay across the front of it, overlook- 
ing the trail, and it only needed stones cleared 
away and piled on the flanks to make a veri- 
table fort of it, with their rear protected by 
the rocky ledges of the mountain. They 
cleared out the inclosure and then started 
their fire. Presently yells and shouts and 
an excited babel of voices came floating across 
152 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

the valley from the village. Through the 
glasses they could see men, women, and 
children crowding around the four hunters, 
and then there was an immense amount of 
running around and preparations of some 
sort going on in the village. 

“The four were not on the war path, for 
they carried no bamboo knives for head 
hunting,” ruminated the curator. “Tapiros, 
I suppose. Get a lot of wood for a big fire,” 
he ordered. “We want plenty of light if 
they come around to-night, so we can see 
what we are doing.” 

The noise in the village redoubled, and, 
as night came down and the tents and ham- 
mocks were slung, it seemed that every man, 
woman, and child in it was coming to visit 
them in a mob. A singing chorus of the 
wild little hill men came marching toward 
them through the jungle paths. 

“That’s bad!” exclaimed the curator, 
anxiously. “If there was only some way we 
could show our power, without hurting them! 
We can’t let a mob get to close quarters 
with us.” 

“I think I’ve got a scheme, sir,” ventured 
Nicky. “There are a few flashlights in my 
vest-pocket camera. Suppose I run out and 
153 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 

explode one in the path, about thirty yards 
off?” 

“Well — get it ready, anyhow,” hesitated 
the curator. “They don't seem to be hostile. 
Dwight and Sadok will cover you, while I 
will step out in front of the log and try to 
act like a peaceable human being.” 

The pygmies came on in a crowd through 
the dark, torches here and there shining 
through the bush. They did not seem to be 
sending out flanking parties, which was reas- 
suring, and the main body came on down the 
trail. Nicky dashed out, lit the fuse of his 
flash, and had just gotten back to the tree 
when it went off. A blinding glare lit up 
the scene. It showed at least a hundred 
pygmies diving frantically for cover. The 
whites noted with relief that the men were 
decorated with flowers and carried no arms. 
A party bearing a pig trussed up on a pole 
had suddenly set down their burden and 
decamped. 

“They're friendly!” cried the curator, 
relievedly. “I'd give a million dollars for 
the word 'friend' in Tapiro!” Instead, he 
put his hand over his heart and bowed his 
thanks for the pig, like any after-dinner 
orator. Sadok threw a pile of grass on the 
I 54 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

fire and its flames lit up the scene. The 
moment hung in the balance. 

Sing, boys ! — something plaintive ! — for 
God’s sake, sing!” barked the curator, hastily. 

On such sudden notice Nicky could think 
of nothing but the old camp-fire ditty, “ Sweet 
Adeline.” He poured it out, at the top of 
his voice, the others chiming in on the refrain. 
All over the world, in lonely camp fires from 
the Arctic to the Equator, that plaintive song 
has unburdened the hearts of hunters and 
explorers, as a wolf bays the moon. It did 
not fail them now. Where words lacked, 
music got across. That remote something 
in the plaintive chimes of “ Adeline” that 
satisfies the white hunter had reached over 
into the souls of this tribe of the most ancient 
of all hunters. One or two old men came 
out, quaking, from their hiding places, the 
leader of the original four one of them. 

“ Yow-nata-u; kema-kema!" he quavered, 
indicating the pig. 

'‘Thanks!” called out the curator, des- 
perately. lt Go get him, Sadok and Baderoon. 
We’ve got to do the polite. I never knew 
music to fail with savages yet!” 

They went down and carried the pig up 
ceremoniously, while the curator kept on 
iS5 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 

bowing his thanks. “Set it down in front 
of our tree. I’ve got another idea,” he said, 
as they brought the pig up. “Put another 
of your flashes in front of the pig, Nicky, and 
touch it off.” 

Nicky lit the fuse, and the curator stood 
over the pig, making what he hoped were 
sufficiently impressive incantations over it. 
Presently the flash went off, lighting up the 
whole jungle with its lurid glare. In the 
intense darkness that followed, the pig was 
whisked over the log out of sight. By the 
time sight returned to the eyes of the little 
hill men it had disappeared. 

“That ought to hold ’em for a bit!” said 
the curator, out of the corner of his mouth. 
“They call me Yow-nata , 'sun maker,’ so a 
miracle or two won’t do any harm. Got 
any more ideas, boys?” 

“Yes, I’ve got a good one!” came back 
Dwight. “Let’s have your flasher, sir, and 
your’s, Nicky. They ’re both powerful. Now, 
then, have you got anything to give them, sir?” 

“Sure! I’ve been saving a small bag of 
beads for some such affair as this,” said the 
curator, producing them from a pocket. 

“All right. You walk out there with them, 
and I’ll do my stunt,” chuckled Dwight. 

156 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


“ Thank the Lord, ‘bead’ is one of the 
words the English got,” said the curator, 
starting down to the trail. 

“ Upon [beads] kema! [give]” he called 
out, holding out a handful of them and waving 
it about. The old men crept forward warily. 
As they came close to the curator, Dwight, 
with the flashers held on both sides of his 
eyes, flashed them on. The effect was weird 
in the extreme. It looked as if he had two 
fiery eyes, and the rays lit up the curator 
and made the glass beads in his palm flash 
like jewels. There was an instant dive by 
the hill men into the brush again. 

“ Amare upon kema! A mare upon kema! 
[I give you beads ! I give you beads !] Come 
out, you little devils!” he called, reassuringly, 
while Dwight kept the rays turned on him 
steadily. 

It took a lot of coaxing, but finally the 
same old fellow ventured forth again, trying 
the effect of the light on himself gingerly. 
He jumped back as Dwight turned his face 
and swept the jungle, heads popping out of 
sight like chipmunks as his “eyes” lit up the 
jungle. Then the old man ventured out 
again as the rays returned to the curator. 
Foot by foot he drew near, with many a 
i57 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


questioning glance, and finally the curator 
was able to drop a pile of beads in his hand. 
He grunted with pleasure, and Baldwin 
signed for the other to approach. He gave 
a small pile to each, and then walked back 
to the log. 

'‘Switch ’em off, Dwight. You did fine!” 
he exclaimed. “Now we’ll go about our 
affairs and let ’em watch us for the present. 
You keep guard, and if any of them venture 
too near, just turn those eyes on them and 
we’ve got ’em on the run.” 

The tents were put up and candles and 
lanterns lit, the pygmies watching every 
move from the jungle depths. The curator 
spent his time trying to talk to the old men, 
who had gathered in the trail below their 
log breastwork, and he finally attempted a 
few words in the hated Papuan tongue. To 
his surprise they knew considerable of that, 
too, and Baderoon was at once called to inter- 
pret. Between them a feast was arranged 
next day in the village, and the information 
conveyed that the white man would prefer 
that the tribe go back to their village, now, 
as it was time for sleep. 

At this the older men gave an order (there 
did not seem to be any central head chief) 
158 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


and they all drifted slowly back, their voices 
coming faintly out of the jungle, all talking 
excitedly, 

“And now, boys, we'll call it a day!" said 
the curator. “Looks as if they were going 
to be friendly. Sadok, you stand watch 
until those stars there" — indicating the 
Southern Cross — “come over that mountain. 
Then call me." 

The camp turned in, leaving Sadok on 
guard by the fire. 


IX 


THE FIGHT AT THE CRATER 

“ f^ILL your canteens, boys!” ordered the 
1 curator, as they finished breakfast next 
morning, “and stow all this pig meat we can 
carry, for our aim will be to get through with 
this feast of the pygmies as soon as we can 
and then push on south. Every man pack 
his kit for marching order.” 

Sadok had butchered the pig during his 
night watch, and he and Baderoon each had 
a ham ready for slinging. The camp reveled 
in fresh pork chops, and then cut slices of the 
forequarters for carrying in their pemmican 
sacks. 

Then they set out for the pygmy village, 
weapons still ready in case of any treachery. 
All of the men of the tribe were gathered 
around a great fire, and a huge feast of roast 
brush turkey, sago-palm bread, and yams 
was set out, all ready to eat, but not a woman 
or a child was in sight. 

160 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


“ That's all right/’ reassured the curator, 
as the others looked around questioningly. 
“The English offered the pygmies any amount 
of bribes for a single photograph of a woman, 
but they had all been moved up on the moun- 
tain and no amount of persuasion could get 
them to call one down. It means nothing 
hostile to us.” 

They seated themselves in the circle. The 
pygmy men carried no arms, but they could 
see weapons stacked against the trees near 
by, among them the thin, flat blades of the 
sinister bamboo knives used in head hunting. 
The feast went on merrily, the curator work- 
ing out a system of learning pygmy words by 
pointing at objects and making the question 
sign. Speaking mixed Papuan and pygmy, 
a considerable conversation was being carried 
on. He managed to convey the idea that 
birds and insects were exchangeable for more 
of the beads, and then, finally, after a good 
deal of groping — 

“Him want you-fellah stop prenty much 
time here,” explained Baderoon out of the 
tangle of words and signs. 

The curator shook his head and pointed 
southward, smiling. Instantly an angry look 
shot across the faces of the older men. They 
161 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


shook their heads vigorously, and some halt- 
ing Papuan dialect followed. 

“Him say taboo. Prenty debbil-debbil 
mountain thataway,” translated Baderoon. 
“No good. Prenty hantus. Must go back!” 
He pointed north. 

The curator smiled. “Yes, we will — not! 
We might go back and circle around them, 
fellows — but, no, they’ll have scouts spying 
on us until we get out of the country, and 
it ’ll be a jungle fight all the way to try to 
get past them to the south. No; we’ll have 
it out with them now!” 

“Tell them,” he said, sternly, “that the 
Yow-nata is not afraid of any devil-devil, nor 
taboo, nor hantus.” 

An angry buzz greeted Baderoon’s transla- 
tion. The little black-bearded men shook 
their heads violently, and some of them began 
to look around for their weapons. There 
were at least forty in the party. 

“Looks like a close-up!” muttered the 
curator, fumbling for his explosive bomb. 
“We’ll retreat in good order to the south, 
boys, if it comes to a fight. Perhaps if I 
show ’em this bomb it ’ll take their minds 
off it for the present. Good to have it handy, 
anyhow.” 


162 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


All eyes were fixed on the shining bauble 
as he drew it forth. The effect, however, 
was somewhat different than he had intended. 
A fierce cupidity shone in the eyes of the old 
fellow of the trail — -here was a bead that 
transcended all other beads in glory ! 

“Kema! Kema /” (“Give! Give!”) he 

grunted, avidly, holding out his hand for it. 

The curator shook his head. “ Yow-yowri!” 
(“Bewitched!”) he said, pointing to the sun. 
It flashed like a little sun in his hand, but, 
far from being made afraid by its mysterious 
reflections, the desire for its possession gleamed 
fairly murderous out of the pygmies’ eyes. 
A dozen hands reached out for it. Suddenly 
a black hand like a monkey’s paw shot under 
the curator’s arm and the bauble was snatched 
from his hand. The whites jumped to their 
feet, gathering in a close knot. 

“This won’t do! Back off, boys, and get 
a little distance from them!” barked the 
curator. They drew off, Sadok’s shield and 
sumpitan spear covering their immediate 
retreat. But the pygmies were paying no 
attention to them. They fought like wild 
men for the bomb, snatching it from hand to 
hand, clawing and biting at one another with 
primal savagery. In the midst of the snatching 
12 163 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


and grabbing a sharp hiss came to their 
ears. They had broken off its primer in the 
struggle! 

“Run, fellows, run! ,, yelled the curator. 
They did not stop to look back. They heard 
the thing go off among the pygmies with a 
thunder that shook the ground under them, 
as up the hill they tore, past the tree houses 
and up the stony slopes of the mountain. 
Below them they could see a great sandy 
crater in the center of the village, the huts 
all slanting askew, while warriors were run- 
ning to the coconut trees, arming themselves 
hurriedly. A short distance up the hill the 
curator turned and fired the air pistol with 
a long-range shell. The deafening crash of 
its explosion rang through the jungle over the 
village, and they saw little black men thrown 
violently about, like black tumble-bugs, with 
its concussion. They waited no longer, but 
toiled up the hill as fast as they could climb. 
Shouts below and calls in the jungle came to 
their ears. There was plenty of fight left 
in the little hill men, and they knew that the 
mountain was being surrounded and that a 
jungle fight of the most difficult character 
lay ahead of them. 

For a time they climbed steadily. The 

164 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


vegetation was thin and one could see for 
some distance, so that the native archers 
could not get up close as in the deep jungle. 
With Sadok and Baderoon as outliers, they 
headed for the top. The mountain was 
another extinct volcanic cone, and the same 
outcroppings of lava rock, the same belts of 
century plants and aloes, were met as on the 
mountain back of Cassowary Camp. 

Next came bare patches of huge volcanic 
rocks. They could look out, here, over the 
sea of jungle-covered mountains, and from 
the curve of the sides of their own they judged 
that it was a perfect cone, a volcano of some- 
what recent activity. Sadok came running 
in, and in his hand was a long cane arrow. 
The point was blood red, and at first they 
thought he had been hit, but his actions did 
not indicate it. 

“Littly black man close!” he breathed, 
heavily. ‘ ‘ Shoot ’m arrow. ’ ’ 

The curator took the missile and examined 
its head carefully. It was made of a blood- 
red, six-sided crystal, thinned to a point and 
lustrous and polished. 

“ Cinnabar, boys!” he exclaimed. “This 
tribe know all about Red Mountain. That’s 
why they wouldn’t let us go south, and it’s 
165 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


why the southern tribe at Wamberibi would 
not let the English go north, too! I bet we 
see it when we reach this cone top!” 

They pressed on swiftly, the vegetation 
now scattered and consisting only of the most 
arid and gnarly species, all plentifully pro- 
vided with thorns. 

"Look, Orang-kaya!” called Baderoon, 
hastily, pointing back down the mountain. 

Five small hill men were climbing after 
them on the slopes. 

"Never mind them. Put out for the top, 
boys,” shouted the curator, running after 
them. "We’ve got to get there and dig in 
before any flanking parties cut us off.” 

They raced up over the lava-strewn slopes. 
The top of the mountain was a bare cone, 
with a deep, narrow crater, perhaps fifty feet 
in bore, extending down into it. A faint odor 
of sulphur came up from its dark depths. 
Around the lip was fine lava dust and small 
rocks. For at least fifty yards down the 
slopes there was no cover of any sort. 

"You and Sadok stand off those beggars, 
Dwight. Dig in on the rim of the crater and 
pick ’em off. Here’s where we make our 
stand for the present,” ordered the curator, 
as he and the rest of the party ran around 
166 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

the crater to the south. They pawed shal- 
low pits in the detritus and lay down, watch- 
ing the slopes below. No pygmies had come 
in sight yet, but there was much that was 
interesting to study. Out of the jungle 
clearing on the opposite mountain, beyond 
them to the south, rose the smoke of a huge 
signal fire, and their glasses could make out 
huts in the trees near it. To the east, the 
long wall of the Great Precipice stretched 
southward, halving one side of the mountain 
ranges, with the green of the lowland jungle 
swarming up to its base. Near its brink was 
a small clearing and yet another pygmy 
village. It was their country, all right! 

But to the southeast rose a sight that 
held them all breathless. The geological 
formation in the interior was dark and 
stratified, of basic instead of volcanic rock, 
and the ragged edges of thin coal seams 
could be picked out running through the 
jungle along bare escarpments. Before them 
rose sheer a truncated cone of a mountain, 
separated from the interior formations by 
a deep gap. Its whole upper half was bare 
of jungle, and across it, in a horizontal belt, 
ran a vein of deep pink, at least four hundred 
feet from top to bottom! 

167 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


“Red Mountain!” gasped the curator, as 
he and Nicky stared speechless at the fabu- 
lous wealth spread out before their eyes. 
“Pure cinnabar — and Lord knows how many 
million tons of it! It makes that Mexican 
deposit look like a thirty-cent Mex. dollar 
when you want to buy a tin of white man’s 
tobacco with it! Well, while we’ve got time, 
the most important thing in the world to 
do now is to locate that mountain on the 
map.” 

The crack of Dwight’s automatic came to 
their ears as the curator got out his notebook 
and the mess kit with his surveyor’s compass 
packed in one of its pans. Dwight and 
Sadok were already at work, they could hear, 
and as they opened out the map page a long 
cane arrow came singing over their shoulders 
and soared on down the slope. 

“Gee! They must be getting close up on 
that side! Make it snappy, sir!” said Nicky, 
drawing his revolver and laying it on a rock 
beside him. 

“We’ll add about three miles to the base 
line, from the banyan tree to this cone,” said 
the curator, imperturbably, drawing it in 
with his pencil. Then he sighted Red Moun- 
tain most carefully through the compass bars. 

168 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

“ Distance, about seven miles in an air line, 
I should judge. What do you think, Nick?” 

Baderoon, to their right, gave a grunt and 
shot his stout bow. The arrow soared down 
the slope and into a thick aloe clump on the 
edge of the jungle. A little black man rose 
out of it and fell over backward. 

“Good shot, Baderoon!” commented Nicky, 
admiringly. There was no better archer, or 
fighter, either, than their Papuan “black- 
boy!” Nicky squinted across at Red Moun- 
tain, shimmering in the distance. 

“Seven, or nearly eight miles, I should 
say,” he pronounced, judgmatically. 

An arrow sprung from a rock about seventy 
yards down the slope as he spoke. It came 
nosing up to them and fell just in front. 

Nicky sighted the spot with his Officer's 
Model. “Here's where I scintillate!” he 
laughed. “This old six-gun's at her best at 
long range. Save your shells, Mr. Baldwin. 
I'll get that bird!” 

Another arrow soared overhead, coming 
from the west. Then the curator gave a 
low exclamation. 

“Look, Nick! There goes another signal 
fire, far to the south. We’ll have all pygmy 
land around us in another day!” 

169 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 

The revolver barked at that instant, and 
a puff of dust flew out from the side of the 
rock behind which a hill man lay concealed. 

“Scared him to death, anyhow!” joked 
Nicky, turning to look at the new fire. 

“We’re surrounded, all right, except on 
the east, and we can’t hold off a whole army 
of them,” said the curator. “We’ve got two 
impossible things to do, as I see it — get in to 
Red Mountain and bring off some specimens 
and then make our escape from the country.” 

“Fat chance!” grunted Nicky, cheerfully, 
firing his revolver again. 

The curator studied the prospect to the 
east, for there lay their only hope of escape. 
The terrific geological fault that had made the 
Great Precipice was nearly buried on that 
side by the outpourings from their volcano 
when it had been active, but the lava swept 
down to the precipice edge in a frightful 
slope, where it ended abruptly. Blue dis- 
tance beyond it told of a considerable drop; 
how much could not be conjectured. 

The arrows were coming more thickly, 
now. It seemed that at least twenty of the 
little hill men lay concealed in among the 
bowlders below them, and the occasional 
pop of Dwight’s automatic told that more 
170 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


of them had come up on his side also. Only 
to the east was there a free passage, but no 
man could live on that slope. Nicky and 
Baderoon were both busy, and once in a 
while they would get one of the pygmies, 
exposing himself recklessly in some crawl to 
a nearer point of vantage. The curator 
borrowed Nicky’s alcohol cook kit and went 
down below the rim of the crater to a little 
rocky ledge inside on the brink of its deep 
bore. Here he set about making a mulligan 
for the party, for it was now long past high 
noon. He shook his half-empty canteen after 
filling the soup tin. 

“Water running low!” he muttered, 
uneasily. “We’ve got to get out of this 
to-night! It’s up to me to do a scout down 
to the precipice brink this afternoon, some- 
time.” 

A perfect fusillade of shots, and a yell for 
help from Dwight’s side, caused him to jump 
to his feet hastily and rush for that side of 
the crater. Putting his head cautiously over 
the brink, he instantly whipped out his air 
gun, for a long black line of pygmies was 
charging up the slope, each man behind his 
shield, the yellow blades of their bamboo 
knives sticking up over their shoulders. 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


Sadok’s sumpitan was powerless against them, 
and Dwight was frantically shoving a fresh 
clip into the butt of his automatic. Then 
a shell from the air gun whistled on its way, 
and its explosion burst in a riving crash over 
the center of the black line. Dwight opened 
fire and those on the right flank began to fall 
back, while Sadok, no longer able to contain 
himself, dashed down the slope at the sur- 
vivors of the left flank. He flung himself at 
them with whirling parang as bamboo knives 
flashed out, and in another instant he was 
in the center of a whirlwind of flashing knives. 
The parang-ihlang sheared through their 
shields like paper, for Sadok was a star 
swordsman. Five to one, he was getting the 
best of them, when the white flash of a keen 
bamboo knife cut him across the shoulder 
and he fell, guarding himself with the parang 
in his left hand. 

Dwight's bullets flew like hail, while the 
curator dashed down the slope, armed only 
with Sadok’s abandoned sumpitan spear. In 
a second he found himself facing the shields 
of the two pygmy survivors, who circled him 
with ready knives. They were as light as 
feathers, but so keen that a single cut would 
sever off a head, the curator knew; also that 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


he was a mere dub with that spear! Standing 
over Sadok, he stood them off with the spear 
point, while the little black men danced and 
feinted around him, watching their chance. 
He had counted on Dwight following him, 
but a quick patter of shots from the crater 
came to his ears, telling that they were busy 
at something urgent up there, too. Then 
Sadok staggered to his feet. 

“ Shoot, Orang!" he gasped, hoarsely. In 
a flash the curator divined his meaning. The 
sumpitan held a dart! He raised it suddenly 
to his lips and blew the missile full into the 
face of the pygmy opposite him. The other 
dashed in, to be met by the flash of Sadok’s 
parang, which sheared the bamboo knife 
aimed at the curator like a straw. Defense- 
less, he turned and ran for the jungle, while 
the other pygmy fell in a limp heap before 
him. 

With Sadok leaning heavily on him, weak 
from loss of blood, the curator crawled slowly 
up the slope. Another arrow came singing 
out of the jungle and sailed close over their 
heads. With a curse of rage, he turned and 
shelled the spot with his air gun. A crackle 
of fire followed the detonation. The dry 
thicket seemed to leap into red flame, set 
i73 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


afire by the shell, and clouds of white smoke 
swept up the slope after them. Meanwhile 
a heavy sputtering of pistol shots came from 
over the crater brim. Acting on a sudden 
impulse, the curator bore off to the east and 
dropped Sadok behind some bowlders near 
the rim of the precipice. Then he crawled 
down carefully from rock to rock, looking up 
anxiously over his shoulder at the summit, 
for they were evidently hard pressed up 
there. The yawning abyss fell away below 
him as he came to the edge and looked over. 
Below was the green jungle of no-man's 
land, the vegetation creeping up the lava 
talus part way, where it was finally stopped 
by lack of moisture and soiL From the brink 
to the nearest point below was at least a 
hundred feet of sheer fall, and from there on 
down the slope was the limit angle of repose. 
Without a long rope there was no escape 
that way. 

“Well,” said the curator to himself, after 
an examination, “of the two impossibilities, 
we’ll have to give up Red Mountain and try 
this! Eight miles through pygmy land, with 
them buzzing like hornets about us — good 
Lord!” he groaned. “Our report will have 
to go as it stands.” 


174 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

A yell came from Dwight, up in the crater. 

“ Where are you, Mr. Baldwin?" it called. 
“We stood 'em off! Close call! Hurry up! 
they're getting ready for another rush.'' 

“Bring everything and come on down 
here !" he yelled back. “Now’s your chance." 

Presently Dwight, Nicky, and Baderoon 
came creeping over the brink on the north 
side. They slid down the slope on their 
backs and flung themselves among the first 
large bowlders. The jungle to the north 
was now a crackling mass of fire, driven on 
by the west monsoon, while a fog of smoke 
covered that side. Behind it lay the pygmies, 
unable to pass, and they were safe for the 
present from that quarter. But how soon 
a rush would be made from the west and 
south they could not tell. The curator 
crept back and brought Sadok from where 
he lay hidden in the bowlders. Bandaging 
the gash on his right shoulder as swiftly as 
he could, he got their party together on the 
precipice brink and each man contributed 
whatever he had that would go toward mak- 
ing a rope. The boys' two tent ropes, the 
curator’s hammock rope, and Sadok's turban 
cloth were knotted together hastily. Then 
came the curator’s hammock and the two tent 
i7S 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


flies. Tying the upper end to a gnarly iron- 
wood bush that grew near the brink, they 
let it all down over the cliff, where the lower 
end dangled far below, still some twenty feet 
above the slope. 

“ Won’t do!” said the curator, grimly, 
hauling it up again. “A man’s got to land 
there on his feet or he’ll never escape pitching 
on down that steep slope. Quick, now, all 
your belts, boys!” They were added on 
and the rope lowered again. Shouts and 
yells came from the summit. At least forty 
of the little men were up there, singing and 
dancing with victory around the crater. 

“Well, I’m off!” said Nicky, who was the 
most fearless climber of them all. He shook 
hands abruptly and swung over the brink. 


X 


CINNABAR MOUNTAIN 
CHORUS of shouts arose from the 



A pygmies as they discovered the little 
knot of whites clustered on the precipice 
brink. Brandishing their weapons, they 
climbed on down, shooting as they ran. The 
curator stopped them with a shell that shook 
the mountain side like an earthquake and 
sent a shower of stones rolling down upon 
their own position. A yell came up from 
below. Nicky had arrived on the slope and 
was stamping a shelf in the lava stones, send- 
ing showers of them rolling on down below 
him. Dwight grabbed the rope and went 
down after him, leaving his automatic with 
the curator. The hill men were now sneak- 
ing down toward them, exposing themselves 
only occasionally to the sumpitan and pistol. 

“Good-by, Orang-kaya!” said Baderoon, 
fumbling next at the rope. “Me prenty 
’fraid — but me go!” He swung himself over 
and dropped down swiftly. 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


“You next, Sadok. Can you manage it?” 
said the curator, anxiously. The Dyak smiled 
grimly; wounds, weakness, physical disa- 
bility, were nothing when the spirit com- 
manded. His fearless face showed that his 
mind could overrule the frailties of his 
body. 

“Me do!” he grunted, and down over the 
cliff he went, his wounded right arm forced 
to do its part. The curator turned and 
faced the pygmies. 

“Fine little men!” he grinned. “Some 
day you will be swept away like chaff — but 
here’s one explorer who can appreciate you! 
Good-by!” 

He swung over and dropped down the rope, 
hand over hand. The men of that old, old 
race, centuries before the first Papuan came 
to these shores, were still in his mind as he 
descended. He regretted that he could not 
have lived with them peacefully and studied 
their natures more thoroughly. The ancient 
civilization of the hunting tribes was theirs, 
and with it a mental quality that had kept 
them inviolate among their hills in spite of 
a ring of hostile Papuan savages below them, 
far superior in stature and numbers to all 
their tribes put together. Like most of the 
178 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

real aborigines of the world, they would well 
repay study. 

When he arrived at the foot of the rope 
the rest of the party had tramped quite a 
trail along the foot of the cliff. Stones that 
now showered over from above told them that 
it was essential to get to the jungle as quickly 
as possible, and the shortest way was obviously 
along the cliff base and over the turn of the 
volcanic cone poured down here by former 
eruptions. 

But Nicky looked back at the rope, long- 
ingly. He hated to leave all that good 
equipment behind. The rope part they could 
dispense with, but without the curator’s ham- 
mock and their own tent flies the jungle 
would be a misery during the afternoon 
thunderstorms. 

“Hike along, boys. I’m going to make 
a try at that rope before they find it and haul 
it up!” 

Unmindful of the curator’s expostulations, 
amid the rain of falling stones, he crouched 
close to the cliff face and drew out his revolver. 
Most of the stones were dropping far out; 
it would be a mere chance if he were hit. 
Three times he fired at the knot above the 
curator's hammock, a mark perhaps forty 
13 179 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 

feet off. Then an arrow struck the rock at 
his feet with a sharp tang, and, looking up, 
he saw one of the pygmies leaning far out 
over the cliff, aiming at him again. The 
rope had shaken a little at one of the shots 
and on this faint hope he sprang for the tent 
fly and tugged fiercely at it. He thought he 
felt a strand or two of it break and so jumped 
up on the tent fly, coming down with all his 
weight. Another arrow spun past him. He 
realized that it was only the peculiarity of 
having a vertical target that saved him, for 
the archer above was overshooting him because 
of it. With a last violent tug the rope strand 
parted, and Nicky sprawled headlong down 
the lava slope. Like a cat he spread-eagled, 
flattening himself out on the rubble of small 
stones, and finally he fetched up a consid- 
erable distance down the slope. 

He was now a mark for a dozen arrows 
from above and they buzzed at him like hor- 
nets. Rising, he leaped on down, stabbing 
with his feet and sending an avalanche of 
rocks on before him. His strides kept getting 
longer and longer. A breathless feeling of 
getting out of control, falling down the slope 
faster and faster, made him think quick. 
He must stop himself at any hazard, risk a 

180 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

fall, if need be! He resolved on the latter, 
and, throwing himself sidewise, came down 
with a bump that jarred every bone in his 
body. He saw stars for an instant, but held 
his consciousness. Looking back, he could 
see that he was far out of range now. Rub- 
bing himself painfully, he got up and started 
to step gingerly from rock to rock across 
the slope. 

But the hill men weren't done with him 
yet. A great stone fell over the cliff and 
came bounding down straight toward him. 
Nicky dodged it, as derisive yells came from 
up above. Two more rocks came whizzing 
down the slope, bounding like cannon balls. 
They seemed very terrific, but the boy stood 
his ground and watched them pass, shooting 
in a great arc high overhead and landing 
with a shock against the trees down in the 
jungle below. He realized that he was not 
so easy to hit ; that all it required was watch- 
fulness and care to win out. 

The slope was so steep that he could toss 
a pebble clear down to the jungle below him, 
it seemed. Rocks, cactus, and century plants 
covered the hill, the former so unstable 
that they had to be tested before putting 
weight on them. As quickly as he could the 
181 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


boy picked his way along the slope, dodging 
rocks of all sizes flung down from above. 
Shouts of encouragement came from his 
own party under the cliff, who now were 
moving along fast, calling for him to hurry. 
Then a yell of warning echoed down from 
the curator, and Nicky looked up, bewildered. 
The hill men had brought a pole from the 
jungle and were prying off a whole ledge of 
stones hanging loosely poised above the 
cliff edge. 

He leaped along like a mountain goat, 
stumbling and sliding, starting rocks by the 
dozen. The pygmies had chosen a place 
where the avalanche would fall right across 
his path, and he could hear the distant grumble 
of it as he jumped. Desperately his eyes 
looked below for a refuge, and then he dove 
for a huge bowlder and fell flat behind it as 
the roar, it seemed, of the whole slope coming 
down upon him sounded in his ears. Deter- 
mined to die game, he rose behind his rock 
as the noise swept down toward him, for he 
was more afraid that his own rock would 
start and crush him than anything else, and 
had determined to leap out at the first sign 
of its going. 

Then came the roar of hurtling stones 

182 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


passing over him in a flying cloud of dust. 
The thunder of it was appalling. His own 
rocked moved with the jar, slightly, and then 
settled back on its foundations again as 
Nicky recalled the impulse to jump clear. 
Then came a wave of fine pebbles and dust, 
curling around the ends of his rock and form- 
ing a sort of pit around him. Showers of 
small stones cascaded over the top and fell 
down on him like a rain. It gave him an 
idea. As the landslide subsided he crouched, 
hidden behind the rock. Anxious calls came 
from under the cliff, but Nicky lay hid. Why 
not pretend that the avalanche had buried 
him? He only hoped that the curator or 
Dwight would not attempt to come out and 
rescue him. 

The silence up on the cliff was broken by 
exulting yells, and he could hear them string- 
ing along now above the precipice, searching 
for the whereabouts of the curator's party be- 
low. If they would only keep on without him! 

Another “ Coo-eee!” came from under the 
cliff. “Nicky! Are you alive , old scout?” 
came the yell of Dwight’s voice. 

He dared not call back. The hill men were 
too keen, and not easily fooled. He lay 
quiet, listening. Presently the crackle of 
183 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


falling stones and more yells and cries along 
the cliff told that their party had been located. 
They were probably retreating along under 
the cliff as fast as possible. Nicky turned 
and crept down the slope on his stomach, 
looking back to see that the rock still hid him 
from sight of the cliff top above. Then he 
worked over behind a small bush and peered 
up through it. Whether there were hill men 
watching the slope, concealed among the 
rocks above, he could not tell, but there prob- 
ably were. The whole north side of the 
volcano was smoking with the jungle fire and 
it crept down until the thickets on the verge 
of the precipice were red with burning trees. 
He noted with relief that it barred the passage 
of their pursuers that way, or at least it 
necessitated a detour, and he hoped that their 
party had gotten away. 

Whether to risk exposing himself now was 
the question. He was alone in the heart of 
wildest New Guinea, and it was necessary 
to rejoin their party and make a speed back 
toward the boat, for undoubtedly the hill 
men knew of a defile down the precipice 
somewhere which would let them out into 
no-man’s land. Also thunderheads were 
sweeping up from the south, and it would 
184 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


not be an hour before the afternoon storm 
would be due. 

Well, one thing was certain, he ought to 
let his people know that he was still alive 
before they got out of hearing. Nicky drew 
his revolver and fired two shots quick with 
it. A whoop came from up on the mountain. 
They were watching the slope still! Then 
two shots from Dwight's automatic barked, 
muffled, from over the shoulder of the cone. 
It sounded as if from the jungle. They would 
either wait for him there or circle, the boy 
reasoned. Probably the latter, and he could 
rejoin them down below at the foot of the 
slope. And now was the time to run, for he 
could hear the hill men above calling for 
their companions and presently the whole 
tribe would be back. 

Nicky rose and jumped down the slope. 
He got a glimpse over his shoulder of two 
tiny black fellows dancing and hurling rocks 
impotently, and then gave all his attention to 
getting down, for the slide was steeper than 
a log chute. Swiftly the jungle seemed to 
rise up to meet him, and with a final bound 
be reached the friendly shelter of the trees 
and darted out of sight. 

Then, for the first time, his aching, bruised 
185 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


leg forced itself into consciousness and he 
began to limp. Directing shots between 
him and Dwight gave them his location, and 
then calls and shouts brought them together. 

Dwight came running through the jungle, 
grinning with joy. 

“Gee! old man, we'd given you up for 
lost!" he yelled, capering about and punching 
Nicky with delight. “Got all the plunder 
with you, too, haven't you!" 

“Sure!" gurgled Nicky, happily. “That's 
what this war's all about! Where's Mr. 
Baldwin?" 

“Back there a bit, waiting for us," said 
Dwight. “We got to make time. Forced 
march all night." 

“Going to be a wet one, too!" retorted 
Nicky, limping along as a mutter of thunder 
came rolling up from the south. “We’d 
better keep the tent flies out. " 

They rejoined the curator, who noticed 
the game leg as soon as Nicky came up. 
“Tough luck, kid!" he said, after congratu- 
lations had been exchanged. “I’ll have to 
ask you to grin and bear it as best you can, 
for we've got our work cut out for us to-night !" 
He drew his compass, took a bearing — and 
started south , through the jungle! 

1 86 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

A general grunt of amazement ran through 
the party. “Why, Mr. Baldwin, I thought 
we were to hurry north, so as to get back to 
the canoe ahead of them! ,, cried Dwight, 
voicing the feeling of them all. 

“Well, I'll tell you,” replied the curator, 
heading on steadily through the thickets just 
below the base of the volcanic talus. “It’s 
a bit of psychology that Uve been working 
out. In the first place the pygmies, I’m 
sure, think as you all thought. They judged 
by our actions that we were beaten and would 
think of nothing but hurrying back to the 
sea again. They will make forced marches, 
to-night, to head us off, I’ll bet! And then 
we must reckon on the human nature of our 
own folks, too. 'Seeing is believing’ is one 
of the truest old sayings there are. In other 
words, we’ve simply got to bring back some 
real specimens of that cinnabar and be able 
to swear where we got it. No financier that 
I know will back a company to open up mines 
on the mere say-so of a red mountain seen 
eight miles off. I know red mercury ore 
strata as far as I can see it — but I might be 
mistaken. Suppose it should turn out to 
be just red clay, or red iron ore!” 

“Gosh, sir! you’re right!” put in Nicky. 

187 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


“I sort of felt that way myself, but I suppose 
I did not feel it hard enough to really do a 
stunt like this!” 

“Sure!” smiled the curator. “It’s the 
difference between a youth and a man, 
Nick. The youth gets the vague feeling, but 
he’s as like as not to do nothing about it; 
the man reasons until he is convinced by the 
force of logic — then he acts. Now I was 
studying the wall of the Great Precipice 
when we were on the brink doing the rope 
fire-escape trick, with just this idea in mind. 
There are gaps in this precipice all along it, 
where the rivers tumble down from the hill 
country to the low jungle on their way to 
the sea. I marked one, some distance beyond 
that first signal fire to the south. It can’t 
be more than five miles from there in to 
Cinnabar Mountain, and the gap’s about 
five miles from here. Can we do ten miles 
to-night? That’s the question.” 

“How about getting past that village?” 
asked Dwight. 

“That’s the nice thing about my scheme,” 
laughed the curator. “I figure that all their 
fighting men have gone north, long ago, to 
aid the men of our village in repelling invaders. 
Those signal fires are evidently used to call 
188 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

the clans when war parties of the Outanatas 
attack them. The women and children, and 
perhaps a few old men, will be all that we 
are likely to encounter, and we ought to slip 
by them successfully in the night." 

“ Won't they come down our rope and 
track us, sir?" said Nicky. “I've been wor- 
rying about that, although no one tried it 
while I was on that slope." 

“You answered that with your revolver, 
Nick!" chuckled the curator. “No man 
can drop forty feet to that talus and live. 
Of course they may bring up more ropes, in 
time, but my idea is that all that’s left of 
them, with perhaps a party of fighting men 
from this village ahead, are now hot-footing 
it for some pass that they know of to the 
north. We’ll be on Red Mountain and 
giving them the laugh while they are looking 
for us up near the lagoon — and let's hope 
they fall in with a war party of the Outanatas 
while they are about it! Here comes the 
rain, men," he broke off. “We’ll make 
camp and cook something and get a bit of 
sleep until the moon comes up." 

They chose a spot well hidden in the jungle 
and the tent flies were spread on poles. A 
monumental feed was cooked, between Nicky's 
189 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


alcohol burner and a small fire well hidden 
in the rocks under the tents, while the rain 
came down in its usual torrential downpour. 
Then they all turned in for some much-needed 
sleep. By nine o'clock the rain had stopped 
and a faint light over the jungle promised 
moonlight through the thinning clouds. The 
party was roused out and they broke camp, 
Nicky and Sadok, who were stiff and sore, 
being rubbed down with arnica by the 
curator before setting out. With the tent 
flies wrapped around them, the three whites 
set out through the wet jungle, with Sadok 
and Baderoon, whose naked skins seemed 
to revel in the raindrops, leading on 
ahead. 

In an hour they had reached the banks of 
a small, swift stream, the headwaters of 
some river that emptied into the sea fifty 
miles away. Alligators, water snakes, and 
giant frogs plopped into its eddying depths 
as they came up. The splash and gurgle of 
waterfalls came from up the slope. Pushing 
along carefully, on the lookout for pythons 
and snakes of lesser degree, they climbed up 
along its banks. Steeper and more rocky 
became the gorge through which it defiled. 
Then rocky ledges of black basalt hemmed 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

them in on both sides, and out of the gap 
cascaded a foaming waterfall. 

In the weird moonlight, with the black 
shadows almost solid to the touch, it seemed 
to Nicky and Dwight that that was the most 
perilous climb they had ever ventured upon. 
Baderoon was quaking with fear and hanging 
back reluctantly, for he was no hill man, but 
the curator and the intrepid Sadok led on 
upward, pioneering out the way and hauling 
them up the steeper ledges by a tent fly let 
down for a rope. Higher and higher they 
climbed, the jungle falling away below almost 
vertically, while towering above them rose 
the walls of the gorge for thousands of feet. 
It seemed good to be at last buried deep in 
the cleft, with visions of the awful fate that 
would befall them below, if any slipped, hid 
mercifully from sight. 

The stream came down in a series of cas- 
cades, varied by steep stretches where it 
sluiced along through deep channels in the 
rock. At one place they came to a veritable 
waterwheel where the whole torrent raced 
down a slope into a shallow basin scooped 
out of the solid basalt, and it shot up in a 
roaring pinwheel of water through which 
not even Sadok’s sumpitan could be driven. 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 

Above it the walls of the gorge closed in 
to a narrow cleft, with high, vertical sides. 
There was no getting past, on either side! 

“Case of swim!” ejaculated the curator, 
as they all stopped and looked in at the deep 
pool filling the cleft from wall to wall like a 
black ribbon. “Get out your flashers, boys. 
There’s one grain of comfort in it, anyway — 
no one would ever dream that we’d come up 
this way!” 

They undressed and did up the bundles 
in the tent flies. 

“Glory be to Mike, there are no anacondas 
in New Guinea!” shivered Nicky, looking 
at the black pool and thinking of former 
Guiana jungle days. 

Still, it took courage to negotiate that 
pool! They scanned every inch of the wall 
for snakes and then plunged in, close together 
for mutual protection, the flashlights tied 
atop the boys’ heads with their bandannas, 
and the packs strapped on their shoulders. 
It seemed that that pool would never end! 
Its narrow ribbon of still water wound on 
and on through the cleft, with here and there 
a ledge or a rock shelf over which the water 
tumbled in a silent spillway, and where they 
could get out and rest. From ahead came, 

192 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


louder and louder, the roar of a waterfall. 
The curator listened uneasily. Such a cas- 
cade would be a catastrophe, for, if there 
was no way around it, by no possibility 
could they get up farther. 

They hurried on eagerly, now, anxious to 
learn their fate, fear of some unknown thing 
seizing them from under water forgotten. 
A final pool showed up in the glare of the 
flashlights. The curator heaved a huge sigh 
of relief, for the head of the pool was a foam- 
ing suds of eddying water into which the 
stream of the cascade tumbled from above, 
and — blessed sight! — sticking up out of it 
was a huge tree, jammed in there by some 
freshet, its upper end jutting out into the 
stars which shone through the opening of 
the cleft !” 

“ Praise be!” ejaculated the curator, plung- 
ing in. “Come here, tree — I love you!” 

They all swam over, and one by one crept 
up the log. A low hail from the curator, and 
the hissed caution, “Lights out!” told them 
that he had arrived safely in the ravine above. 
They found him already dressing. They 
were in a steep, rocky ravine, filled with 
jungle growth, and out of the bare rocks at 
last. Hastily the boys dressed and made 
193 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


up their packs again. Sadok and Baderoon 
had merely to shake themselves and they 
were ready for further adventures. 

“All aboard — and no talking!” whispered 
the curator, as they pushed on up the ravine. 
For a mile it climbed steeply, and then Sadok 
halted and pointed silently into the jungle. 
A well-defined path came down to the brook 
here; and there were empty gourds and 
crude pottery jars on the bank. 

“We are opposite the second village,” 
whispered the curator. “Step lightly, fel- 
lows, and be careful not to break a stick. 
We’ll bear off to the left, to high ground.” 

They went on noiselessly, following the 
general windings of the creek in the bright 
moonlight. After another mile of it the 
curator halted. 

“I’ve a hunch that Red Mountain is 
somewhere near us by now,” he muttered, 
cautiously. “Nicky, you’re the best climber. 
Swarm up that pandanus, as high as you can 
get, and take a look-see.” 

Nicky went over to the tree and was soon 
up in its branches. Below him fell away 
the lesser growth of the jungle. Other tall 
trees still surrounded him, but as he shinnied 
up a high branch, at last a vista to the east 
194 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

opened up. For a long time he gazed, with 
all the exultation of the civilized white man, 
on an object of immense value to his race, 
even though surrounded and protected by 
a ring of savagery. Before him, shimmering 
in the clear moonlight, lay the irregular 
truncated cone of Red Mountain, the enor- 
mous vein of cinnabar parting its upper half 
like pink layer cake! Black seams of coal 
measures streaking the mountain face told 
of the geological period when the mountain 
was bom. Behind it piled up the stratified 
peaks and table-lands of similar mountain 
formations. The whole story lay clear in 
the educated, scientific mind of the boy, and 
he thrilled with its significance. Here lay 
the true geological formation of the interior 
of Dutch New Guinea, with Red Mountain 
as a last outpost. Behind him lay the tre- 
mendous fault of the Great Precipice, with 
its chain of volcanoes resulting from that 
mighty crack in the earth's surface. But 
before him lay all the mineral wealth of New 
Guinea — coal measures, iron ore, what not — • 
that would make this vast island, the largest 
in the world — almost a continent — a land 
of the utmost value to the white race! 

Coming back to earth from these explorer’s 
14 195 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 

dreams, Nicky got out his compass and took 
the mountain bearing. It was not over two 
miles from where they were to the slopes of 
Red Mountain. Between them lay a low, 
jungle-clad ridge; beyond it a swale or hol- 
low of some kind, and then the slopes them- 
selves. He swarmed down the tree to report, 
and then they all set out eagerly, in a straight 
line through the dry, arid thickets. 

In half an hour they reached the top of the 
little ridge, and the curator found a leaning 
dead tree and climbed out on it for a long, 
soul-satisfying look for himself. Returning, 
they pitched down into the swale, crossed it, 
and began to climb. Their watches said 
four o’clock in the morning, so it was necessary 
to hasten, as they would be in plain sight on 
that bald spot. 

Up and up the steep hillside they struggled, 
bidding the jungle good-by, negotiating shelves 
and rocky escarpments that turned out to 
be ledges ten feet high when they came to 
them. Far overhead towered the flat side 
of the mountain, almost a precipice, and the 
depths dropping below warned them that it 
would be mountaineering of the most dan- 
gerous kind. 

A few more ledges; soul-harrowing crawls 

196 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


up rocky faces to which they clung with feet 
digging into tiny crevices and fingers clawing 
desperately at crumbly holds, and they had 
reached the bottom edge of the vein! 

Dwight’s pick dug into the rich, red ore, 
and a lump of translucent scarlet crystals, 
hard as adamant and surrounded with a 
matrix of crumbling red ore, fell out into his 
hand. He passed it to the curator. 

“We’ve sure gone through hell for it, sir!” 
he exclaimed. “I guess we’ve done our bit 
for New Guinea, eh?” 

“We sure have!” exclaimed the curator, 
feelingly. “You and Nicky each get a speci- 
men like this and stow it in your packs. And 
now, fellows, an air line for our camp on the 
lagoon. We can make it in two days!” 


XI 


THE FLIGHT TO THE COAST 

D AWN was paling in the east as they crept 
slowly down the ledges of Red Moun- 
tain. The going down was far worse than 
the climb up, and the tent flies had to be 
called in play again to get over vertical drops 
of ten feet or more where one’s eyes could 
not see below how to climb down. Even 
then the haunting fear that some old pygmy 
watcher from the village might have spied 
them on the mountain side lent haste to their 
descent. It was with relief that they all 
gathered in the depths of the jungle again. 

“Now, then, fellows, there’s only one way 
we can do this march to the coast. We 
three will have to keep together while Sadok 
scouts on ahead. Baderoon I’m going to 
turn loose, and let him run for it for Casso- 
wary Camp and then down that trail to the 
Outanata village, where he can get a war 
party started back to rescue us. 

198 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


“Baderoon, you-fellah run catch’m Outa- 
nata man?” he asked. 

The negro grinned. He looked fresh and 
fit, and his long legs could take him like a 
moose through the jungle. 

“ Orang-kaya give me-fellah sign take ’long 
black boy?” he suggested. 

“Sure! They might murder you for your 
mirror, in all your youth and innocence!” 
laughed the curator. “Here, Nicky, get out 
a couple of your empty alcohol tins. The 
chief *d love them, to put in his ears.” 

Baderoon eyed them longingly as Nicky 
got out the cans from his rucksack. He’d 
have dearly loved to put them in his own 
ears, only the important detail of stretching 
the lobe enough for such ornaments had been 
neglected in his youth. Such does contact 
with civilized whites debase the poor savage! 
He handled the cans reverently, and finally 
stowed them somehow in his loin cloth. 

“Tell’m the Thunderer make war on litty 
black men — plenty heads!” grinned the cura- 
tor. ‘ 1 Run — plenty — too much !” 

Baderoon laughed merrily and set off into 
the jungle without a word. By some way 
known only to himself he would cover those 
thirty miles that day, threading alone through 
199 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 

the trackless jungle. By noon next day a 
war party of the Outanatas would be halfway 
back to them, thirsting for a foray on their 
ancient enemies, the pygmies — with the pow- 
erful aid of the man who called down the 
lightnings — or the curator was no judge of 
human nature ! 

After Baderoon had gone, they studied the 
mountains and valleys to the south for some 
time, planning a route. 

4 ‘That big sugar loaf to the northeast looks 
familiar to me, Nick,” said the curator. 
“Don’t you remember it, from our banyan 
tree outlook?” 

They got out the map, and presently 
located it from bearings taken on the map 
from their position on Red Mountain. Once 
on that sugar loaf, it would be easy to locate 
the bald knob above Cassowary Camp. 

He pointed out the shoulder to Sadok. 
“We go there,” he explained. “You stop 
’long front. You see black man, make ’m 
call like red lory, two time, and come back.” 

Sadok comprehended quickly, and with a 
white flash of his teeth led on, his sumpitan 
balanced in his hands for instant use, and so 
they set out. In two hours they had reached 
the shoulder, some six miles through the 

a oo 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


jungle, and were cautiously reconnoitering 
for a lookout. After some climbing, a ledge 
was found that rose over the summits of the 
trees below. They wormed up it and lay 
flat in the grass on its edge, spying out the 
country with their glasses. Over to the east 
rose the cone of the old volcano, with the 
pygmy village on it, the girls' tree huts 
visible like white specks in the sunlit clearing. 
Beyond that was the mountain with the great 
banyan tree on its north shoulder, and 
beyond that again in the blue distance, about 
twelve miles off, the bald knob above Cas- 
sowary Camp. 

But it was the green jungle below them 
that they searched most carefully. The view 
below was not reassuring. The haze of at 
least three fires rose above the trees at widely 
different points. Allowing forty men to each 
war party, there would be over a hundred 
of the pygmy warriors outlying between 
them and their home base. 

“We’ll stay right here, boys, until the rain 
— and then, by George! we’ll try to push 
through them during the storm!” declared 
the curator, with sudden resolution. “It ’ll 
be pitch black for at least two hours after 
that. How’s the ammunition, fellows?” 


201 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


“I’ve only got twelve cartridges left, sir/’ 
said Nicky, lugubriously, "and Dwight has 
two clips, and then he’s through.” 

“Well, I’ve only got four shells, myself,” 
said the curator, cheerfully. “Two of them 
are thirty-yard close-ups. We’ll have to hus- 
band ammunition for a possible rush, and 
depend on Sadok. You got’m plenty dart, 
Sadok?” he asked. 

The Dyak shook his head and opened the 
cover of his bamboo quiver. “Poison him 
all gone, too!” he announced. 

“We’ve got our work cut out for us, then! 
We’ll camp and get something to eat, and 
then wait until the clouds come before set- 
ting out. Meanwhile we’ll have to find a 
upas vine, or something like it. Either 
of you boys know strychnine when you 
see it?” 

They shook their heads. Botany was out 
of their line. 

“Got to know ’most everything if you’re 
a scientist,” grinned the curator, deprecat- 
ingly. “Well, the species we want is 5. tieute, 
native of all this archipelago, the upas vine. 
It’s a climbing shrub, five-leaved, with little 
bunches of berries in a leathery rind like a 
small dried orange.” 


202 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

“I think I’ve noticed one or two like that, 
sir, myself, going through the jungle,” said 
Dwight, reminiscently. “Climbs all over 
larger trees, doesn’t it?” He sketched a leaf 
on a bit of rock as he spoke. 

“Yep. That’s him. You and Sadok scout 
around for one while Nick and I get ready 
some eats,” said the curator. “You may. 
also find the upas tree , which is of the bread- 
fruit family, but I doubt it. Never heard 
of it south of Java. Look for a tall tree a 
hundred feet high, with lanceolate leaves and 
berries in a drooping cluster. Both are used 
for poisoning arrows and darts, from the 
Philippines south.” 

Dwight arranged a lory call for Sadok, in 
case either of them should need the other, 
and they separated, each vanishing into the 
lower jungle. 

Dwight walked along, searching the jungle 
growth with keen eyes. Gradually his course 
led him around the flank to the south and 
into a deep ravine, with great trees dropping 
down the slopes below him into the depths. 
It was impossible to see far, in here, so he 
climbed up a small tree and looked out. 
The ravine led up the mountain side, with 
all the jungle spread out like a map on its 

203 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


flanks. Searching carefully each giant trunk, 
he at length spied one overgrown with a 
profusion of some vine that looked promising, 
and, marking it, he set out. In ten minutes 
he was close enough to the vine to examine 
it more carefully. The reddish bark, the 
five-fingered leaf, looked as if it might be one 
of that famous family of strychnine trees that 
extends all around the tropics, from India 
through the archipelago, to South America 
and across Africa. Dwight thrilled with a 
primal, almost superstitious fear as he looked 
at this sinister representative of its race. It 
was more deadly than a cobra, if it could 
bite you! All the stories he had ever heard 
of the poisonous air that surrounds the 
strychnine trees came to him; and that 
fabled Valley of Death in Java, grown thick 
with upas trees in which nothing can live, 
came to mind. He kept his distance from 
the dreaded vine, respectfully, and was about 
to try to reach Sadok with a call, when voices 
coming through the jungle arrested him. 
He sank into the undergrowth and watched 
through its green depths. 

The voices came nearer, guttural tones that 
set him shivering with excitement. They 
were coming down the ravine on his side and 

304 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

would pass quite near him, he judged. He 
drew his automatic and waited. 

Then three diminutive black-bearded war- 
riors came into view, passing down what must 
have been a trail through the jungle, although 
he had not noticed any in crossing. They 
passed silently through the green glade, and 
then two more came into view. Before them 
they drove a prisoner, a tall Papuan. 

Dwight gasped as he looked to make sure 
— it was Baderoon — captured by the pygmies ! 

All the generous instincts of youth rose up 
in him at the sight, and without thinking 
further he raised his pistol and fired at the 
nearest pygmy. With grunts of surprise 
they all bolted into the forest, while Baderoon 
leaped into the jungle and came running 
toward him, his arms bound behind his back. 
Dwight raised his helmet out of the under- 
brush an instant so Baderoon could find him, 
and then sank out of sight. An arrow came 
singing and tanging through the twigs, and 
then Baderoon stumbled into his lair and fell 
at his feet. 

“ Orang-kichil! Cut!” he gasped, turning 
over on his face. Dwight drew his hunting 
knife and severed the fibers that bound him. 
Baderoon wriggled over, his face alight with 
205 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 

its happy, care-free Papuan smile. Then 
came the grim lines of pain as he bore sto- 
ically the throes of returning circulation in 
his arms. Dwight kept up a cautious vigil, 
expecting momentarily an arrow from some 
unseen source in the jungle. And the pres- 
ence of the deadly upas vine behind him did 
not leave any illusions as to how that 
arrow would be armed! 

Still the stealthy silence! It was his first 
taste of real jungle fighting, and the boy 
would gladly have exchanged it for any 
amount of odds in the open, where one could 
see and think. Not a bush moved, not a 
stick cracked ; the pygmies might have utterly 
vanished from the earth, for any sign that 
the jungle gave to the contrary. 

Then came the call of the Papuan lory, 
twice repeated. It was not far off, and it 
roused Dwight to a frenzy of hard thinking. 
The curator and Nicky, with perhaps Sadok, 
also, were coming, having heard his pistol 
shot. They must be warned at any hazards. 
To move from his place of concealment was 
death. He cudgeled his brains for an answer, 
turning over one plan after another rapidly 
and rejecting them all. 

Three of anything means “ Danger !” in the 
206 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

wilderness, all over the world; such a signal 
they would at once comprehend, and act 
accordingly. Three pistol shots would give 
his location away by their smoke. Dwight 
raised his voice and gave the lory call three 
times in answer. 

Bows instantly twanged in the jungle, and 
two arrows swished through the thickets 
around his position. Dwight took off his 
helmet and peered furtively through every 
vista, searching every tree trunk, but not a 
sign could he discover whence they came. 

Then came the cough of Sadok’s sumpitan 
from somewhere, and a small black-bearded 
hill man rose suddenly out of the bushes, not 
thirty feet away, and fell over backward, 
silently. 

‘ * Me go ! Me-fellah catch’m bow’n arrow !’ ’ 
whispered Baderoon, from the ground, wring- 
ing his wrists vigorously and eying Dwight’s 
hunting knife longingly. 

Dwight nodded approval. Two could play 
at this bushwhacking game ! And none better 
than their own native bushman. He handed 
Baderoon the knife and the Papuan melted 
off into the undergrowth toward the body of 
the dead pygmy. 

A long, sinister silence set in. Dwight 
207 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


watched in every direction, scanning the 
forest intensely through his leafy screen, but 
nothing that he could fire at appeared. Then 
a sudden shock of fright went through him. 
Surely that bush over there was much nearer 
now than when he had looked at it last! 
Surely it was not natural, growing so close to 
the roots of that giant euphorbia that towered 
up near it! Nature did not grow bushes in 
such dense shade! He was about to fire into 
it, when a long black arm struck out from 
behind the tree trunk and there was a flash 
of bright steel, while the bush writhed in 
convulsions and then lay still. 

Baderoon! In spite of his religious taboo 
against steel, he had broken it for them. 
Dwight could appreciate that, and he began 
to have immense confidence in their two wild 
allies. In the jungle, where he and the 
curator and Nicky were helpless, these two 
were masters. They could beat the pygmies 
at their own game. 

“ That’s three,” muttered the boy to him- 
self. Then the essential need to prevent the 
other two getting away to the main war 
parties of the pygmies and telling them of 
their presence presented itself. It seemed 
vital, to the boy’s imagination, and he even 
208 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

thought of sacrificing himself by exposing 
his position to draw their fire, so that they 
could be shot by the others and their plans 
for running the gantlet during the storm 
could go through. 

He was maturing the idea, when a faint 
rustle in the jungle back of him turned him 
around, with the hair rising under his helmet 
with alarm and his pistol ready for instant 
fire. He saw Sadok’s sumpitan rise up cau- 
tiously out of the green and lowered again, and 
the boy breathed relievedly. Presently he 
caught a glimpse of the Dyak’s brown body 
moving serpentlike toward the upas vine. Out 
of the depths between it and the trunk of the 
larger tree overhead the leaves moved. Then 
came a quick, silent jab of Sadok’s kriss into 
the blood-red bark of the vine. It flashed 
down again, and Dwight could see the thick, 
white juice oozing from the wound in the 
bark. Two brown hands rose out of the 
foliage and tied on the tiny bamboo poison 
cup with gingerly care, and then all signs of 
movement in that direction ceased. 

After a long wait, two low calls of the lory 
came out of the jungle near by. Dwight 
answered them. 

‘ 1 Come on out, Dwight,” came the curator’s 

209 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 

voice. “They’re gone. We’re over this 
way.” 

Dwight rose hesitatingly, inch by inch, 
half expecting every moment to be pierced 
by a deadly arrow. Then came the exhila- 
ration of freedom. He felt wonderfully alive, 
eager and able to perform prodigies. He 
sought out the party, stepping as if on air, 
his eyes sparkling with an unearthly brilliance. 
The curator regarded him curiously as he 
came up. 

“Hel-lo! What’s struck you, old top?” 
he exclaimed, vivaciously. “You look as if 
you’d seen an angel! Mostly devils around 
here. Baderoon tells me there were only five 
of them. They ambushed him and trussed 
him up before he could make a kick or a 
jump. We got two, and two more got away. 
The third is outlying somewhere, with Sadok 
and Baderoon looking for him.” 

“I got that one, myself,” said Dwight. 
“ That was the pistol shot you heard. He was 
walking just in front of Baderoon. And I 
found your upas vine, too!” he cried, excitedly. 

“Ah, that accounts for it,” mused the 
curator. “Been lying near it a long while?” 

“Accounts for what? Yes, I was right 
near it, ever since I fired that shot.” 


210 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

“ Accounts for your looking like a man 
who has eaten loco weed, son. You’ll be lit 
up for a while yet ; and you need to, for we’ ve 
got to make a dash, now that those two got 
away. There’s a faint essence of strychnia 
in the air around the upas vine which acts 
like medicine on a human being through the 
pores, Dwight,” he explained. “ You’ll think 
you can move mountains and perform prod- 
igies of valor, for a time. Then will come 
the reaction, like a man drunk with too much 
coffee. Well, boys — let’s go.” 

He raised the lory call to bring in Sadok 
and Baderoon. They rejoined the party soon, 
and Dwight noted that the former had the 
small tube of fresh poison at his belt. 

The party pushed on vigorously. As they 
swept into the valley where the pygmies were 
camped, thunderclouds gathered overhead 
and drops of rain began to fall. It grew dark 
and compass ranges had to be corrected again. 
Then came the tropical thunder and lightning 
with the blinding downpour of rain, so that the 
three white men were glad to shroud them- 
selves in their tent flies. It was a weird march, 
through the tossing forest, with rain swirling 
through the trunks in white sheets, and flying 
dead branches crashing down through the 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


grinding limbs. Sadok and Baderoon flanked 
the party on ahead; so long as neither of 
them came in, it was understood to be safe 
to push on at full speed. Their course aimed 
to pass midway between two of the fires 
noted from the mountain above, and then 
turn and strike direct for Cassowary Camp. 
Baderoon was now well armed, with a bow 
and shield and plentiful arrows taken from 
the slain pygmies, and Sadok’s quiver was 
full of fresh darts, so that a feeling of elation 
filled them as they swept on. The forest 
was noisy and windriven with the storm; 
the snap of broken twigs and the rending of 
vines and creepers in their path did not have 
to be guarded against now. Their only 
danger was in being seen by some outlying 
scout, for whose abolishment they trusted 
their native allies. 

At length the curator pulled out his watch. 

“I think we’ve made it, boys!” he exulted. 
“At the rate we have been going we must 
be well past those camps. We’ll bear over 
to the left now, and pick up Sadok. Shove 
along, boys, faster! — so we can catch up to 
him!” 

They ran through the jungle, bursting and 
tearing their way through the undergrowth, 
212 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

twisting around trunks and dodging under 
creepers. Still no Sadok. The curator called 
at intervals, and they pushed on, but no reply 
came. Then he stopped and raised the lory 
screech at the top of his lungs. 

It was answered by a faint, single call, a 
short distance ahead. With a quick sense 
of foreboding they moved forward warily. 
Then their eyes lit on a brown, muscular 
figure lying by a tree trunk in the dim light of 
the roaring jungle — Sadok! 

They flung themselves on the ground with 
one common impulse, and crept rapidly 
forward. Sadok was still alive when they 
reached him. His eyes looked over at the 
curator sleepily. 

Then he pointed with three of his out- 
stretched fingers, indicating the directions 
with a significant brush of his left forefinger 
swept out over the others. He fell over on 
his side with the effort and closed his eyes. 
A long arrow stuck out from the tree over 
his head and its carmine tip was covered 
with a whitish glaze that made one shiver 
to look at it. Blood flowed from a slight 
scratch on Sadok’s shoulder, where the arrow 
had merely scraped it. The curator leaped 
at the wound, sucking fiercely at it. He 

213 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


shook Sadok roughly, and, reaching for the 
medicine box in his hip pocket, poured a 
pellet into his hand and forced it between 
the Dyak’s teeth. Then he rubbed a pinch 
of purple powder into the cut and called on 
the boys to help. Together they rolled him 
back and forth vigorously. While they were 
at it, another arrow whizzed like a hornet 
between their heads. They dragged Sadok 
behind the tree, while Nicky stood guard 
with his long-barreled .38. He could see 
nothing in the direction the arrow had come 
from, but the little hill men were somewhere 
around them now, that was certain. 

Between them, Dwight and the curator 
had got the Dyak moving feebly again, and, 
dragging and pulling him roughly, they all 
managed to crawl on through the jungle. 
Once lost in the underbrush, safety was 
assured by vigilance, for their adversaries 
dared not show themselves, either. It grew 
steadily darker, and the crash and boom of 
thunder kept up unceasingly. Now and then 
the vivid flashes would light up the dark 
glades and a black form would be seen through 
the trees, when the insignificant pop! of the 
pistols would ring out. 

“Now, boys, it’s dark enough to make 

214 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

time!” said the curator, halting the party. 
“Here are two poles that I picked up while 
crawling along. Make a stretcher of them, 
and you two carry Sadok, while I cover your 
retreat.” 

They rolled a tent fly around the two poles 
and laid Sadok on the narrow strip of canvas 
left in between them, while the curator crept 
off into the jungle to reconnoiter. The 
crash of Nicky's revolver in his hands came 
to them once, and after a time he returned 
and they rose to push on. The Dyak was 
heavy, and the two boys staggered along, 
forcing their way through maddening vines 
and thorn ropes that tore at them in the dark. 
Behind them, somewhere, was the curator, 
covering the slow retreat, circling through 
the forest, occasionally visible when a light- 
ning flash lit up the jungle with its vivid glare. 

Once or twice the red flash of his pistol 
spat out in the dark, and once the sharp blow 
of an arrow on his back caused Dwight to 
drop his burden hastily, while Nicky tore it 
out of his clothing anxiously and made sure 
that it had not penetrated to the skin. 

An hour passed, and then, utterly weary, 
the boys fell in a heap, pulled down by the 
wrench of some particularly obstinate vine 
215 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


in their path. They waited for the curator 
despondently. They could do no more. Sud- 
denly Sadok sat up, as if in a trance. He 
did not speak, but the boys, delighted with 
this evidence of returning power, pounced 
on him and pumped his arms and legs with 
all their strength. They were still at it 
when the curator returned. 

“ Glory, Mr. Baldwin — he’s coming round!” 
yelped Nicky, looking up from his work. 
“He’s going to get over it!” 

“Looks promising!” smiled the curator, get- 
ting out another pellet to give Sadok. “We 
can thank the rain for that! No arrow can 
stay virulent long in this weather ! Raise him 
to his feet and we’ll try to make him walk.” 

They propped Sadok up and, half carrying 
him, half leading him, they set out again. 
He staggered along as if walking in his sleep, 
leaning heavily against first one and then the 
other of the boys. Gradually the rain abated 
and the lightning flashes grew less frequent, 
so that it was necessary for the curator to 
stop and crouch in the jungle to light up the 
compass with his flasher concealed under 
the tent robe. Then came pitch blackness, 
and the dripping silent jungle hid them like 
a shroud. 


216 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

“1’m afraid we’ve lost Baderoon, boys,” 
whispered the curator during a stop to take 
a bearing. “He had plenty of chance to 
locate us, back there in the storm, we did so 
much firing. I’ve had to reload entirely, 
once. You can’t have more than six shots 
left, Nick.” 

“I’ve got a clip and a half, sir,” inter- 
rupted Dwight, cheerily, “and what is more, 
Sadok will be in shape again soon. I’ve 
noticed his muscles flexing occasionally, of 
their own steam, while helping him walk. 
Let’s go. We’ve got two good hours of this 
yet!” 

His artificial buoyancy and untiring energy 
were a great asset to the tired party now, 
and they pushed on faster, with Sadok walk- 
ing almost normally. Mile after mile was 
passed, and then a glimpse of the stars showed 
occasionally through the tree tops. They 
were tired to the limit, but Dwight, under 
his strange stimulant, pushed on as fresh as 
if just out of his sleeping bag. Dawn came 
at length, to sift its dim light through the 
jungle. It found them still on the march, 
with Sadok walking unaided, occasionally 
muttering an incoherent word of Malay. 

Then came the murmur of a brook and they 
217 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


burst out of the jungle, to splash across it 
into the open glades, with the mountains 
towering all around them, their tops hidden 
by the rising mists of early daylight. The 
party heaved a huge sigh of relief as they 
stepped out into the deep wet saw grass. 
They were about a mile above Cassowary 
Camp, and it was their own stream that they 
had crossed. The country looked like home, 
indeed, to them, for half a day’s march farther 
lay their base camp, the canoe, and freedom. 


XII 


THE ESCAPE TO ARU 

S UDDENLY Sadok began to run. The 
boys attempted to restrain him, but the 
curator held them off. 

"Let him alone, boys. His mentality’s 
coming back — it’s a good sign. Wait.” 

They watched the Dyak, who was now 
running in a crouching position, his long 
sumpitan trailing over the grass in his left 
hand. As he neared a clump of trees out in 
the swales he dropped from sight in the grass, 
his progress only marked by the waving of 
the blades. They searched the tree care- 
fully, but only what appeared to be a large 
black mass, well hidden in the dense foliage, 
offered any possible mark. 

Then the sumpitan rose slowly out of the 
field, and presently a large black bird tumbled 
down through the trees. The Dyak was on 
his feet in an instant, dashed through the 
thicket, and seized his trophy. Then he 
came back, holding it up triumphantly. 

219 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 

“Me catch’m new spec’men, Orang-kaya!” 
he announced, exuberantly. Gone was the 
dull, expressionless look in his eyes, replaced 
now by the sparkling zest of the primitive 
hunter. 

“Boys, he’s got a long-tailed bird of para- 
dise, by Jove!” cried the curator, excitedly. 
“Rarer than the superba! Great work, 
Sadok!” 

They all ran to him and examined the 
prize. It was of glossy black, with bronze 
and purple glories of peacock-coal hues, 
making the feathers iridescent with change- 
able colors. A superb tail of feathers two 
feet long, and the side plumage brushed 
back, as it were, to form tufts of plumage 
along both sides of the back, completed the 
bird’s extraordinary ornaments. 

“Almost makes you forget the pygmies, 
eh, Sadok?” grinned the curator, suggestively. 

The Dyak’s face looked blank. Then his 
memory began slowly, painfully to work, and 
he put up his hand slowly and felt the band- 
age on his shoulder. Gradually his expression 
changed to comprehension, anger, disgust. 

“Ugh!” he shuddered. “Me kill’m two — 
t’ree! Then me know nothing. Me come 
hit— arrow?” he asked. 


220 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

“ Yep. We found you. Carried you through 
the jungle for miles. Me cure’m upas [poison]. 
All well now!' ’ 

A kind of wonder grew in the Dyak’s eyes. 
It was the first time in his experience that 
any man had survived a poisoned arrow. 

“Orang-kaya! him know everyt’ing!” he 
cried. “Him God — big-fellah !” He stooped 
down and enbraced the curator's knees ador- 
ingly. 

“Here! Cut it!” said the curator, embar- 
rassed, as he disengaged himself, and there 
were tears in his eyes. “God Him great big- 
fellah, Sadok! Him live in sky. Him hold 
the world in his hand, so, Sadok,” holding 
out his cupped hand. “Him make you- 
fellah save my life, plenty much; make 
me-fellah save your life! Me tell you ’bout 
Him, some day, Sadok,” he said, affection- 
ately, laying his hand on the Dyak’s shoulder. 
“Gad! and I don’t know any greater pleasure 
than that will be, either!” he exclaimed, under 
his breath. “A man’s God is what I will 
show him! Come on, fellows!” he broke off, 
hastily. “We got to shove along; it would 
be death to be caught in these open swales.” 

The party marched on down toward the 
old site of Cassowary Camp, and were soon 


221 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


at the familiar grounds where so many adven- 
tures had befallen them and so many happy 
days spent in collecting. The mountain 
loomed up invitingly behind it, and the 
curator led the way up the slopes. 

Dwight felt himself stumbling unaccount- 
ably. His eyesight appeared to be wavering, 
and the bushes that he grasped at to aid in 
climbing seemed to elude his grasp. 

“Mr. Baldwin, quick! I'm fainting!" he 
gasped, weakly, and he pitched forward on 
his face, his arms still reaching uphill. 

They all stopped. 

“The reaction has come," said the curator. 
“He'll be better soon. I think we can risk 
an hour's stop and get some rest and some- 
thing to eat." 

His eye roved the mountain side, and 
finally rested on a rocky ledge with bowlders 
and thickets of thorny bushes on its brink. 

“Carry him up there," he ordered. “We’ll 
dig in there and lay low for a bit." 

They brought him up, and the curator 
applied restoratives, while Nicky and Sadok 
busied themselves in rolling bowlders and 
making the place as impregnable as possible. 
Then Nicky got out his alcohol kit, with a 
joke or two about its being the only camp 
222 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


fire worth a whoop, and started cooking a 
soup for all, composed of dried pemmican 
and soup powder. 

The site commanded the swales below for 
miles. To the left lay the pebbly bars of 
the creek, with the old trail of the Outanatas 
entering the jungle like a green tunnel. 
With ammunition, they could hold this place 
for a long time, at least until flanking parties 
had ascended the mountain back of them, 
but their supply was now reduced to only a 
few cartridges. 

The curator studied the situation over 
uneasily. 

“I do wish Dwight could move!” he said 
to Nicky at his right. “We might try carrying 
him, but it seems suicidal to me. The 
pygmies are coming, sure as death, and 
they’ll move much faster than we could go 
with a burden. We’d be overtaken before 
we got halfway back to the canoe. We’ll 
have to stay here and fight. After the 
ammunition is all gone, every man make 
for that canoe at top speed. The first one 
there will get sail on her and wait until 
forced to draw out to the lagoon. That is 
about all I can plan ahead at the present. 
Too bad we lost Baderoon,” he sighed. 

223 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


“That was the finest black boy I ever knew! 
No one who ever knew that happy, rollicking 
native could help loving him — and I rather 
depended on him getting through and bringing 
up the Outanatas.” 

He went over to where Dwight lay in the 
shade of a bush. 

“How’s it coming, old man?” 

“I’m weak as a cat,’’ said Dwight, life- 
lessly. “I can’t even move that arm. Pull 
it in out of the sun and lay it across my chest, 
won’t you?” he begged, querulously. 

The curator shook his head. It would 
be at least another hour before Dwight could 
even move his own legs. The curator fidgeted 
with impatience as he cursed the upas vine 
and all its relatives. Hours were precious 
as dear life, now. He had about decided on 
a scheme for pushing along and carrying 
Dwight in relays, when a low whistle from 
Nicky brought him to his feet. 

“Here they come, sir!” announced the 
boy, tensely. 

He peered out of their lair. A long line 
of the little black men swept across the upper 
swales, arrows on bows, walking about fifteen 
feet apart, searching warily every foot of 
the grass. More burst out of the jungle 

224 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


along the creek every few moments, and far 
to the right, other parties could be seen 
beating across the jungle toward the banyan- 
tree mountain. Nothing could escape such 
a dragnet! 

They watched them impotently, as the 
warriors slowly worked down the swales 
toward their position. There were at least 
fifty of them in the line that finally reached, 
the site of Cassowary Camp. Then they 
began to slowly filter up the mountain side. 

“Now's our only chance!" said the curator 
in a low voice. “Sadok, you pick off any 
that come near this position, or any that seem 
likely to discover us, and we’ll hope that the 
rest may go by without finding us.” 

“How about their finding the canoe before 
we do?” suggested Nicky, eagerly. 

“I’ve thought of that. We’ve got to 
move as soon as they pass us, and get Dwight 
along somehow. Sadok and I will carry 
him. We’ll have to beat ’em to it.” 

A pygmy came out of the bushes directly 
below him, and his little black eyes popped 
with sudden discovery. Before he could 
utter a yell a dart from Sadok’s sumpitan 
ended him. Then another appeared, working 
uphill to their right, and he, too, was tumbled 
225 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


over in a silent heap. The curator felt a 
touch on his arm. He turned his head, to 
see Dwight, who had crawled over on hands 
and knees, and he was pointing up to their 
left with a look of horror in his eyes. There 
stood a pygmy in plain sight in the act of 
raising the warwhoop ! 

The pistols barked in unison with the 
high-pitched yell that the man let out. There 
were swift rustlings all over the mountain 
side, and a knot of warriors below charged 
up the hill, shouting their battle cries. The 
curator dropped a shell on them. A great 
brown geyser of earth and stones obliterated 
the group, simultaneous with its thundering 
report, and the jungle below burst into flames 
with the intense heat of the explosion. In 
another instant there was not a pygmy in 
sight anywhere on the whole landscape. 

“Now, then, cut and run for it!” hissed the 
curator. “Make for the canoe, Nick, and 
get sail on her. We’ll come along with 
Dwight, somehow!” 

Nicky darted off into the jungle to their 
left, while Sadok and the curator hoisted 
Dwight to his feet and started off along the 
rocky side of the mountain. They saw a 
party of the pygmies scuttling along in the 
226 


THE PISTOLS BARKED IN UNISON WITH THE HIGH-PITCHED YELL TJIAT THE 

LET OUT 


























. 














- 





















• • - 























IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

valley below tQ get ahead of them. Stopping 
an instant to aim, the curator drove another 
shell down on them. Its detonation was 
followed by a sudden silence, and then out 
of the green depths of the jungle across the 
creek burst a full, deep-throated war chant. 

"Ko! Ko! Ko! 

Hy -yah! Hy -yah! Hy -yah! 

To-yah-hyah! To-yah-hyah! 

Ko! Ko! Ko!” 

The curator stopped, exulting. These were 
men ! — not the little, dwarfed aborigines of 
the hills, but big, tall, deep-chested men — 
the Outanatas! 

He scarce dared to hope. An arrow whis- 
pered through the jungle over his shoulder, 
but he heeded it not, his eyes fixed on that 
open green tunnel that opened out on the 
creek bank. The marching song continued, 
and he got glimpses of spears and white- 
scrolled shields moving along through the 
greens of the forest below. Then a tall chief 
stood in the mouth of the tunnel, his face 
hideously streaked with white marks, and, 
hanging like an apron from his girdle, was 
the curator's flaming red bandanna. It was 
the war chief of the Outanatas — and behind 

227 


16 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


him came Baderoon, pointing and urging 
them on vigorously! 

The curator cupped his hands. 

“ Baderoon! Baderoon! Here we are!” 
he yelled. Then he and Sadok laid Dwight 
down under a rock ledge and sought ambushes. 
Yells and war cries sounded from the moun- 
tain side all about them as the long line of 
Outanata warriors splashed across the creek, 
brandishing their weapons. Parties of 
pygmies formed for the assault in the swales. 
The occasional cough of Sadok’s sumpitan 
at different places on the mountain showed 
that he was outlying and picking off men 
here and there. 

Then a knot of the pygmies gathered below 
the curator, evidently bent on taking the 
Outanatas in the rear. He aimed carefully 
into the midst of them and fired his third 
shell. Its stunning report was the signal for 
a general attack, for the Outanatas dashed 
out into the grass country, a cloud of arrows 
preceding them, while javelins soared and 
poised in the air, to sink out of sight in the 
long grass. 

Baderoon came running up the hill through 
the jungle. 

“Me get’m! Me fetch’m, Orang-kaya! 

228 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


Come! No good for white man be here.” 
He was fully armed, and exuberant with 
delight and high spirits. The curator called 
in Sadok, and they raised Dwight to his feet 
and set off at full speed, with the Dyak cover- 
ing their retreat. The boy was fast getting 
his strength back now, and they went along 
rapidly. As they left the plateau the curator 
looked back. The whole country behind 
him was full of tall and short black men, 
fighting like demons, catching arrows on 
ready shields, jabbing at each other with 
long spears, and occasionally the white flash 
of a bamboo knife would tell where one of a 
pair had come off victorious. 

That was his last glimpse of Papuan and 
pygmy, for the way led down abruptly into 
their valley, and soon they were crossing the 
strip of deep jungle and had arrived on the 
coral bank. A shout for Nicky, answered 
by a low whistle, brought them to the stream 
bank, where the old white sail of the small 
proa showed up through the thickets. Nicky 
had already gotten the crate aboard and was 
all ready to shove off. They tumbled in, 
and Baderoon took the helm, while Sadok 
drew in the sheet rope. The creek banks 
slid swiftly by, and presently they were out 
229 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


in the lagoon and headed down it toward the 
capes of the open sea. 

“ Good-by, New Guinea!” shouted the 
curator, waving his hand at the column of 
smoke that rose far back in the hills. “Some 
day the white race will need you — but it’s 
a long, long way off yet, boys!” he laughed, 
dropping his voice. “And now let’s have 
those cinnabar specimens,” he added, as the 
proa swept along like a swallow under the 
fresh breeze. “Mum’s the word about them, 
everybody,” he warned. “It’s the one big 
secret of the expedition.” 

“I suppose we’ll see you next as president 
of the New Guinea Mining Company, Lim- 
ited, Mr. Baldwin?” laughed Nicky, who was 
busily whittling at a short bamboo stick he 
had brought aboard. 

“That opens up a big subject, boys,” 
answered the curator, seriously. “If either 
of you want a big position in such a company, 
just say the word and it’s yours. You’ll be 
rich and prosperous beyond your dreams.” 

“And you, Mr. Baldwin?” inquired Dwight, 
curiously. 

“Such temptations are not for me,” replied 
the curator. “When I’ve reported this thing 
to certain financiers, I’m through. My whole 
230 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

life has been that of a scientist, a seeker after 
knowledge. When I have found a new thing 
my interest in it ceases. As a wanderer 
and an explorer I am happy; as a wealthy 
mine owner I’d be miserable. All my educa- 
tion has been in the service of science; it’s 
the only life for me.” 

“Me, too!” grunted Nicky, splitting his 
bamboo wand and sticking a small sliver in 
it to hold it open. “And, there’s one speci- 
men from New Guinea that I didn't get, and 
that’s a sea snake. You can have your mine 
for all of me!” 

“By George! that’s the way I feel, too!” 
exclaimed Dwight. “The engineers and the 
moneyed men can have Red Mountain, for 
all I care. I’d far rather collect a new 
butterfly in some out-of-the-way hole than 
own a million dollars. All I want is to 
be with you on your next expedition, Mr. 
Baldwin.” 

The curator looked into their eyes under- 
standingly. 

“It’s the way we naturalists all feel,” he 
said, appreciatively. “Enough to live on 
and the chance to do something for science 
is happiness to us. Sadok and I are going 
into the interior of -Borneo next, and I’d be 
231 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


delighted to have you with me. Your char- 
acters are pretty well formed now; all this 
that we’ve gone through has simply hardened 
them, so I know I can depend on you — and 
that’s the most precious knowledge any man 
can have — ” 

“ There's one! Port your helm, Baderoon!” 
came from Nicky. They looked around, to 
see a sea snake swimming carelessly along, 
his head a foot out of the water. He was 
afraid of nothing and stuck out his tongue 
warningly as the proa sheered toward him. 
Then his oarlike tail flashed into swift motion 
and he shot along by their gunwale, but 
Nicky was too quick for him, and with a 
swift jab of his wand brought him aboard, 
squirming and striking furiously from the 
cleft in which he was caught. 

“Look out! He’s highly venomous!” 
warned Nicky, coming aft. “Watch out — 
he’s getting away!” 

The snake dropped to the bottom of the 
canoe and darted up its side. With a swift 
clip of the rod Nicky broke his neck, and the 
“specimen” lay squirming aimlessly in the 
bottom of the boat as they all watched it 
narrowly. 

“He’ll be ready for skinning out presently,” 
232 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 


chirped Nicky, cheerily. “As a snakist I've 
got you fellows backed into the cellar !” 

The proa had now run down opposite the 
capes, and the swell of the open sea slid her 
about like an airplane. That mountainous 
coast is always windy and stormy, and it 
was making the usual squally weather now. 
The proa bucked and plunged like a race- 
horse, her lee outrigger buried in foam, the 
weather one clipping the tops of combers, 
while the three whites sat out on the bamboo 
wings that hung out from each side on the 
outrigger braces like a basket. It was a 
wild and exceedingly wet ride, the proa 
careening down the wave slopes like a hawk 
and soaring almost bodily out of water when 
lifted up on the white-capped combers. 

The land dropped swiftly astern; towering 
up into heavy banks of clouds rose the dark 
ranges of the Charles Louis Mountains, with 
the woolly pyramids of the afternoon thunder- 
heads gathering in the sky back over the 
interior. It was their last look at Dutch 
New Guinea, for soon the cloud banks lowered 
and ugly squall clouds, like long dark cigars, 
swept across the horizon, shutting them in 
in the gray circle of the sea. A chip thrown 
over the side and timed by the curator's watch 
233 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 

showed a speed of nearly ten knots. At that 
rate they would reach Aru at night — a land- 
fall that would be dangerous in the extreme 
until the stars came out and the sea went 
down. 

Accordingly, the curator shortened sail, 
reefing the lateen down to half its original 
bulk. The proa now labored and wallowed, 
keeping at least one of them bailing vigor- 
ously. She was an able boat in the eyes of 
her original owners, no doubt; but then 
water, more or less, was nothing in their 
naked philosophy! 

Then came the rain, beating the sea flat 
and drenching them to the skin. Through 
the smother of it the proa drove on steadily, 
laying her course for Aru as close as possible 
on the starboard tack. Later fell a flat calm 
and the stars came out. She rolled incredibly 
in the smooth, welling billows, but gradually 
these went down, until by midnight all was 
quiet and they lay drifting idly on the black 
bosom of the Banda Sea. Now and then the 
phosphorescent wake of a large shark would 
pass them, but finally this interest, too, 
waned, and everyone fell asleep except the 
curator, who had volunteered to take the 
watch. 


234 


IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA 

He sat dreaming under the stars, the sail 
hanging out idly and scarcely straightening 
the sheet. A gentle gurgle of phosphorescent 
fire eddied from the captured Papuan paddle 
that they had used for a rudder. The dim 
forms of his companions lay huddled in the 
dark, lying on the bamboo framework over 
the outrigger poles. 

The curator regarded them with feelings 
of quiet satisfaction. Their dash into Dutch 
New Guinea had been a success. They had 
brought back an immensely valuable natural- 
history collection, and mineral information 
to the world that would soon add a vigorous 
trade settlement to those two forlorn Dutch 
military posts, six hundred miles apart, on 
a wild and savage coast. But above all he 
rejoiced in the spiritual results of the expedi- 
tion with deepest pride. Those two boys 
had shown courage and resourcefulness far 
beyond their years ; they had faced privation, 
danger, and battle with a grit and determina- 
tion, a cheerfulness and lack of grouch, that 
had proved them men after his own heart. 
And to serve the cause of science they had 
refused the opportunity for fabulous wealth 
and all the ease and comfort that money can 
give. With them and his two devoted natives 
235 


THE BOY EXPLORERS 


the curator felt that he had a scientific organ- 
ization that would do. Yes, it would do 
mighty well! 

He smoked on, thinking silently as the 
hours slipped by. Finally a light breeze, 
the precursor of dawn, sprang up, and the 
proa slipped quietly along, little rills of water 
trickling against her planks. It grew light 
in the east, and after a time out of the mists 
in the west developed the solid cloud banks, 
pierced with pale outlines of islets, hill, and 
jungle, of the shore line of Aru. 

“Land ho!” yelled the curator, waking 
them all up. “Here’s Aru, boys, dead ahead, 
and we’ve beaten our proa that was to have 
come for us by two days!” 


THE END 


HARPER’S 

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